10. Immigrant advocacy may be the new oil painting. Artist Tania Bruguera has decided to spend one year living in Corona, Queens and is running an “advocacy group/art project.” I think the money quote from the NY Times article about her project is this: “‘She’s an artist? I didn’t know that,’ said J. P. Jimenez, a salesman at Metropolitan Lumber and Hardware on Roosevelt Avenue, opposite the storefront Ms. Bruguera opened last month. ‘I don’t see nobody going in with paintings.’”

9. Foul Mouthed Street Art:

8.

Yesterday I got an email from BarackObama.org. In a response to Jerome Corsi’s new book Where is the Birth Certificate? and to poke a little fun at the Birthers, Obama’s campaign team came up with the above graphic design for a mug. You can all insert your own variation of a “No Tea Allowed in this Mug” disclaimer joke in the comment section below.

7. For the Rembrandt inside of all office workers: Post it note art.

6. Paddle8.com is a new website where visitors can view works and collectors can make purchases. The wrinkle is that influential cultural figures act as curators for the exhibitions of works that go on display. In the same way as visits to galleries and museums, didactic material is provided that puts the works in context and provides insight about a particular artist’s practices. Glenn O’Brien is the curator for the next show.

5.

Devoted readers of my previous posts know that I am a big fan of public art. While I’m partial to NYC, Philadelphia has a ton of wonderful murals and a new interactive website has images of those murals and information about the stories they tell. My favorite is “The Heart of Baltimore Avenue”  (featured above), by David Guinn. For this mural, you can zoom in on a particular person and hear a brief description of who they are in their own words. Here’s a link to the site: http://explorer.muralarts.org/

4.

The folks over at Techcrunch.com have a story about a photographer who is claiming to have snapped the largest photo ever taken indoors. Although the writer of the article I link to below points out that it is actually 2,947 photos stitched together, the clarity of the detail is amazing. The photographer is Jeffrey Martin, founder of 360cities.net and the subject of the photo is in the Strahov Monastery, in Prague, Czech Republic. Video above, story here: 40 gigapixels of awesomeness

3. Dustin Grella is asking people to call him at the “Animation Hotline” and leave him a voicemail. He will then do a work of art based on your VM. The phone number is (212) – 683 – 2490. You can watch videos of his works, set to the recorded VM, on his website. The images plus the words make for a kind of visual poetry.

2.

Lech Szporer and Matthew Blair undertook a project to synchronize a series of actions, within a specific time frame, on two different sides of the world.  On the same day, while Szporer was in Rome and Blair was in New York, they both drank a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette at the same time. What feels like the climax of the piece is when both men leap into two rivers. Szporer into the Tiber and Blair into the East. After that they each smashed a bottle and collected the shards of glass. Then they had another coffee. They showed this work at a gallery in Miami during Art Basel 2007. Included in the installation were recordings of rolling landscapes from trains Szporer rode in Tuscany and Blair rode in Brooklyn, the glass collected from the broken bottles, their Gmail conversation about the piece and the top recording above.

The second video features the same artists, doing another simultaneous project with Blair in Berlin and Szporer in New York. Blindfolded, they find their way through the streets of both cities, struggling at moments to find their way amongst the crowds, cars and bussle of each respective metropolis.

1.

Photo by Stephen Mallon

Stephen Mallon’s “Next Stop Atlantic” series showcases the disposal of old NYC subway cars in the Atlantic Ocean. Once they submerge and land on the ocean bottom, the subway cars became reefs for various creatures. According to a NY Times photo feature on them earlier this week, the practice is going to be discontinued because new subway cars have plastic parts that make the prep process too expensive. I wonder, do fish also gather around the doors and not push to the middle of the car? Because when people do that on the subway it really pisses me off.

10. The folks over at Mashable have put together a slideshow of their favorite iPad portraits. Nothing says (or should I say texts) 21st Century Art than the use of digital hardware as a medium. This one, by Andrei Popa, is my favorite.

image by Andrei Popa

9. Brooklyn resident Johnathan Lopes has been making a Lego version of Brooklyn for the last four years. The Daily News got the scoop, but Gothamist has better images of Lopes’ living room installation.

8. Mitt Romney kicked off his likely 2012 presidential campaign this week. The logo his graphic designers came up with reminded some commentators of the Aquafresh logo. Perhaps his campaign song will be Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean.” Inspired by Romney’s logo, Elizabeth Weingarten at Slate put together a slideshow of the strangest presidential advertisements from history.

7. Look out Google, there are some new kids on the digital art block. TheStreet.com reported earlier this week on tech-start ups attempting to “bring art to the masses.” In January I attended a demonstration of one them, Artsicle, which is a NY-based start-up that allows users to rent a piece of art for 50 dollars a month before committing to buying it.

6. I came across a post the other day by the artist Inge Jacobson, who has created a hand-stiched reproduction of a Vogue cover. My hope is that Ms. Jacobson’s work gets the attention of Conde Nast, who in turn stops publishing the magazine on paper and switches to an all fabric format.

Image by Inge Jacobson

5. Fliers showing detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as a missing person are popping up in NYC and in Berlin. I’m waiting for a contemporary pop artist to start making empty milk boxes with Weiwei’s face on them. Here is a flier hanging outside of The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

4. Guy meets art school girl. Guy knows nothing about art. Guy seeks out advice on how to sound art educated on Reddit and funny comments ensue. Trying to impress cute artsy chick. Know noting about art. Help. My favorite response is: “I love impressionism… This is my Gilbert Gottfried voice.”

3. The other night my wife and I attended the premier of “Nine Types of Light,” the film companion to TV on the Radio’s new album with the same name. The band, their friends and an assortment of directors came up with a unique music video for each song on the album. Some are animated, some are funny, some are just plain weird. All are interesting. The videos were storybooked together by Tunde Adebimpe, the band’s lead singer. The entire film can be viewed on YouTube: http://youtu.be/8B5GP0AiQMc?hd=1

2. In an interview before he died, John Hughes explained the Museum scene from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”: http://youtu.be/p89gBjHB2Gs My favorite part is when he compares the Seurat pointillist painting to the making of the movie itself.

1. You know those pictures you take of the ground and the clouds while you fly to Florida to see your grandma? Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down to you, amateur airplane passenger photographer. Popten contributor Morgan Holzer put me on to her friend Nate Bolt, who did a fantastic time lapse photo project while he was a passenger on a San Francisco to Paris flight. From his vantage point, he set his camera to take photos of the entire flight and captured Aurora Borealis in process! Morgan tells me that Nate’s work is usually this awesome and if this piece is any indication, she is damn right. You can follow Nate on Twitter.

In 1988 Mega Man 2 was released to NESites everywhere, and changed my life twice. I stumbled on it when I was a young man of nine years, and then again recently (yeah, about a month ago, thank you Wii for bringing the classics back!)

So, I want to talk about fear in the awesome game of Mega Man 2. Disclaimer: I’m an excitable person when it comes to games. Disclaimer done.

For those not in the know, Mega Man 2 is the second installment in the acclaimed Mega Man franchise – a series about a robot-badass created by Dr. Light to fight an army of robots led by the dreaded Dr. Wily. You know, your regular action side-scroller that’s a hallmark to the 8-bit NES universe. Just to re-cap for our friends, side-scrollers have a basic rule to them – the character goes from the left side of the screen to the right side, fighting enemies and jumping across platforms to get to the end of the level. Sometimes your character goes up, sometimes your character falls down, but it never NEVER goings back the way it came. Just about every side-scrolling game from Contra to Mario Bros follows this tradition. But in Mega Man 2, the creators added a certain technique that heightens the fear level to bone-chillin’.

I was running through the first level – all my skills at jump-shooting floating robots re-activated from their decades-long dormancy – and made it to the end. For those who never played Mega Man 2 , at the end of the level when you go to fight the Wiley Robot of the Level (with fearsome names like Cutman…Bubbleman…). To get to them, you have to go through two sets of energy doors. There’s always a pause between those doors for the player to change weapons, and say a quick prayer to the gods of Robotica that your silicon ass will make it out alive. You know that beyond the second energy door is the Enemy Boss. You psych yourself up, you run through the energy doors, and then they close behind you. The game LOCKS THE DOOR BEHIND YOU.

Why is this brilliant? Here, let me describe a scene for you…

You go over to your friend’s house for dinner. Your friend answers the door with a knife in his hands. Behind him you can see food cooking and it smells amazing. You walk inside.

On the Fear table of 1 to pissing myself, I’m at about a 2.

Now, try this out.

You go over to your friend’s house for dinner. Your friend answers the door with a knife in his hands. Behind him you can see food cooking and it smells amazing. You walk inside.

Your friend locks the door behind you.

My fear factor jumps way up the scale. I’m looking for a weapon and scoping out other exits. But…what’s the big deal? The deal is that your friend just eliminated your ESCAPE ROUTE. Sure, you’re in no real danger. Sure, your friend is totally not going to hack you to bits while your back is turned. People survive these dinners all the time. It’s completely irrational to get jumpy.

But it’s completely normal.

I mean, why the heck did your friend lock the door behind you?! What’s the point of that? Why did he bother to make it hard for you to get out, or for anyone else (possibly help?) to get in?

All these thoughts point back to your Fight/Flight instincts. Back in the day, when your ancestors were bludgeoning each other for mates you had to have some wits about you ‘cause you didn’t know when the next alpha male was droppin’ on your ass. You had to make split-decisions on when to run and when to gun. These instincts are triggered from time-to-time even in civilized times like these. It’s what happens when you’re on a stuck elevator – panic sets in because suddenly you’re aware that you’re trapped and you got no way out. Convicts on death row have markedly higher levels of adrenaline once their sentence is given, making them more dangerous inmates, even when their execution is scheduled years down the line. Philosophical careers are made on such theories.

The game designers in Mega Man 2 understand that fear, that panic, that pathos when they slam the energy doors down behind you. The feeling of being trapped, especially trapped with the Level Boss, ups the pressure on the Player. And as we know, anything that ups the pressure makes for memorable gameplay. I’ll never forget playing Galaga with my brother, when he got to level 74…intensely memorable. Notice I didn’t say “enjoyable gameplay”. Just memorable.

“Locking the door” is not a unique technique to Mega Man 2. In fact it’s used everywhere from Super Metroid to Double Dragon. Mega Man 2 just executes this technique with killer precision and so it’s a great example of how game designers in the NES era had a handle on implementing fear and stress in their game. Given the constraints on graphics and memory at the time, Mega Man 2 does a lot with very little. There are no $30 million audio studios, or hordes of design teams, or 3D animators like there are for titles like BioShock or Call of Duty. No one spent a year digitally rendering the Mega Man 2 movie sequences. But with a little attention to detail like “locking the door” an old side scroller easily bests leading titles of today.

Playing it again last month made me realize that my nine-year-old self was really being pitted up against an age old psychological exercise. Mega Man 2 let me practice facing my fears in the comfort of my living room while Mom made me lunch. To this day I still get panicked from time to time, but panic comes from the same place that all panic derives. If you buy into the fantasy that the game is a life-or-death situation, what’s the difference between that and an actual life-or-death situation? One thing I do know, if I can beat Mega Man 2, I can probably beat anything else out there. And have a killer high score.

The goal is surgically implanted data interfaces using nanotechnology. This would allow wired and/or wireless access to data networks similar to the Internet through direct sensory input by either stimulating appropriate receptors (i.e. optic, auditory nerves) or through links with the associates areas of the brain. The technology would likely begin as a series of external accessories such as viewing glasses and headphones; these would essentially be “souped-up” versions of their modern counterparts. Integration and acceptance of these kinds of devices has already begun, primarily in the areas of electronic gaming, scientific research, and military training (i.e. “virtual reality” helmets and tactile feedback gloves). The advances in our technology in some cases have been developed to help those with serious injuries or disabilities.

Applications for this hardware will be created and extend its uses from simple tasks to much more involved ones. For example, an interactive google map, coupled with a satellite GPS system, and a set of on board sensors in your car will allow you to drive it remotely to any destination. Simultaneously, you could be chatting with 1 or more of your friend’s wirelessly, and playing a video game tournament with yet others. In fact, I think the ability to multi-task in the future is going to create a real divide between older generations and newer ones. What follows is a test of brain to brain communication through a computer interface. The result is what one might consider elementary telepathy.

The current step in the evolution towards implanted interfaces is the trend towards multifunction smartphones and low-cost personal media players and netbooks. The next iteration will be focused on enhancing the mobile web browsing experience in an augmented reality. Picture Facebook or Twitter feeds implanted on real life through clear screens that help disseminate information faster. A handheld device in a few years will most likely be paper thin, translucent may look something like this, but with an interactive screen with multiple ways to guide its behavior.

It will provide extra interactivity with the existing World Wide Web and content designers will begin to customize their designs to better take advantage of its capabilities (as they already have with the iPhone); these capabilities will almost certainly be combined with other functions, such as a phone or music player, rather than the device serving as a dedicated Internet browsing device or the aforementioned personal media player. A single hardware manufacturer will likely dominate the field in the beginning, with the lure of licensing fees and governmental regulation quickly bringing in new competitors. As more manufacturers produce the devices and they reach a larger portion of the populace they will supplant the mobile phone as the must-have portable electronic device. As the complexity and prevalence of these devices increases, so too will the demand for services taking advantage of its capabilities. Existing telecom providers, especially current cellular phone companies, will continue increasing wireless data access speeds to meed the growing demand. As of right now we even have conducted tests on monkeys who can us BCI devices.

The progressive advancements of technology make it difficult to anticipate the new forms of what a cellular phone may look like in just a few years, but I posit that its evolution could be in glasses. At CES this year Vuzix displayed a 2d/3d augmented reality experience that lacked incredible programs, but pointed to a very tactile virtual/real space. Certainly some sort of video overlay much closer to  our eyes in the form of glasses or contact lenses will become normal. These devices will pick up signals from ‘the cloud’, and receive their electricity wirelessly. These waves and how they bounce off of each other will also track distance between one responder and another. Our hands could have receiver devices in the form of a ring or gloves that would allow for any surface to become an interactive space. The lens and its connection to one’s hands could create difficulties in full awareness in both spaces although toggling between one world and the other would be as simple as saying a word or a specific motion. Much like braces, in the future, we could have a ring around a molar that would allow for uttered words to become commands.

The change from physical devices to embedded or nanotechnology I believe will be steeped in good reason. The most innocent of which is the pursuit of helping those with serious injuries, trauma, debilitating diseases, or physical disabilities. This changeover will happen over the next decade, and we’ll be seeing incredible strides in the field by 2020. Having nanotechnology working within us will have two likely advantages: First, like our cells, these small bionic bodies will be capable of surviving on their own, fixing themselves, and will not need to be replaced or repaired. Second, the proximity and ability to interact with our neurons so closely with create a symbiosis with our bodies that cannot be replicated by outside interference.

Deep societal impacts and ethical issues will be gradual and mostly unnoticed until the leap to completely implanted devices is made. A world in which these effects are obvious and widespread would definitely be a lot more dramatically satisfying, but don’t seem as likely until the truly scary device comes out that switches us over to being truly immersed in both realities. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a radical difference, either; class divisions in America today aren’t really a hot-button issue on a day to day basis, but they’re definitely real and sometimes quite dramatic in individual cases.

Much as the Internet has come to have an impact on nearly every aspect of daily life in developed nations, these data interfaces will bring a myriad of changes to the world. Many will be improvements that enrich people’s daily experiences with their world and with each other, but as with any technology, there will be darker sides to be dealt with as well. While society will be profoundly changed by this technology, it will be in subtle ways.

Overall, the speed at which we build technology and devices is exponential. In this sense market niches will divide and create new world orders (a Google for the next gen). The following are descriptions of areas of American society most impacted by data interfaces:

• Economic/class divisions
  • Existing divisions between individuals and families of varying economic standing will be thrown into sharper relief than at any previous period in history. The presence and quality of an individual’s data interface will become the single greatest determining factor in quality of life.
  • Society as a whole will see great increases in overall quality of life, but class differences will be thrown into sharper relief than ever before as those without interfaces form a disenfranchised, disadvantaged underclass.
  • We will also see a growing chasm with those who want to adopt these sorts of devices, and those who do not want such interaction.

• Education
  • Modern classrooms and lecture halls will be almost unrecognizable.
  • Primary and secondary schools will continue, for the most part, to be held in physical buildings because of the need for children to develop physically and socially, though “remote education” will achieve wide acceptance.
  • Many physical classroom materials, such as pencils, textbooks, and chalkboards, will be replaced by virtual equivalents.
  • Younger students will still have physical crafts and activities, but by junior and senior high school almost all instruction will take place through data interfaces.
  • Homework assignments and tests will be distributed and turned in through an encrypted e-mail style system, and special hardware and software will be implemented to block outside data access when necessary to help curb cheating.
  • Students from poor backgrounds, unable to afford the best interface hardware and software options
    • Federal and state aid programs will try to bridge this divide, but will be unable to meet the needs of the population
  • Most activities will not be teacher oriented but rather group task oriented.
  • Individualized focus for each student on a 1:1 level will be achieved through software/curriculum creators
  • Students will be engaged with direct learning and apprenticing through A.I. mentors.
    • They will begin contributing professional materials much earlier through this method of learning
    • Students of engineering will learn at their own pace
    • A more democratic education will allow for hyper specialization
  • A board of teachers for individual subjects will be given the ability to program better A.I. teachers.
    • A rise in the need for psychological care among our youth will lead to more integrated programs
    • Common issues such as anxiety, depression, and anger management will be part of core psychological learning courses
    • Leadership, problem solving, and self-direction will be used as guidelines for all courses
  • The margins of error will be diminished by a complete change to digital mediums
  • The results of our schooling will be an ongoing challenge with metrics being created on a day to day level.
  • Our programs will have the capacity for agile change

Business

• BCI implants will become commonplace because fellow co-workers without these interfaces will be unable to compete
• The modern businessman will have nearly nothing to lug back and forth on business trips other than a few changes of clothes.
• Cloud computing will allow for hands free use of much smaller CPU’s tucked away in a pocket.

Media

• With the change in wireless speeds it could be that we record absolutely everything from birth.
• Media will have new meaning as experience of life becomes too segmented to follow.
• Films like ‘The Truman Show’ will crop up in much different ways.
  • Already on YouTube there are groups of friends who create channels that are simply their lives working together.
• People will tune in on news media in geographical ways.
  • When a crisis is happening various people in those areas will allow live access to their channel.
    • Similar to when Iran’s twitter users were able to relay what they were seeing live during the revolution
  • Finding these ‘channels’ will be simple and your eyes will be linked to their ‘sight’.
    • The experience will be completely visceral.
    • Wars will be viewed on a very personal level.
• Pop Culture will have highly specialized curators
  • With a growing world population – the ability to focus on world occurrences will be next to impossible.
  • A canon of websites will curate the content from other sites.

Our cells will be host to nanotechnology throughout the entire human body, and essentially we’ll be one with biotechnology. The most concentrated points of contact (in so far as how psychologically we perceive the world) like our hands, eyes, mouth, nose, and face will be the most sensitive areas.

• How the technology looks
  • A person may look at the surface quite normal with little to no sign of digital attachment. In fact since most of the body would be infused the sensations of being in a real space or a digital space would be almost innate. Revolving through both places would be a matter of neurally agreeing to be accessing one place or the other, and to what degree.
  • In some cases you may want to be completely immersed. At this point it would be necessary to have a completely intuitive way to guide yourself through a virtual space while still living fully in the real space.
  • It would look like real life now in one sense, but our eyes could “see” overlays everywhere. Our hands would literally have so many nano-computers in it that any subtle gesture would be sensitively felt in our digital space. In this way our hands would act as active mice with many more data points. They would have infinite palettes at their disposal. Our hands would have an overlay right underneath them. We’d be able to see the words come up above where they were. Absolutely any surface could be a keyboard. Your eyes could immerse with others into a film. You’ll always be in complete contact with absolutely everyone you know.
• Seeing someone else in the real space will have infinitely more meaning as we grow into our digital world. Without the need to be in true human contact a certain amount of respect will be put on the ‘home visit’. Much like a business meeting today where people go to meet with others all the time.

To finish I thought it appropriate to salute the men and women at the forefront of robotics, and am most intrigued how we couple our advances in BCI with robotics in the coming years. Come 2015 I would like to have my own R2D2 that understands me better than R2 ever could get Luke.

About 50 years ago, the British Invasion introduced us to acts like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who: bands that have been time-tested as some of the most influential of the 20th century. But few people know or remember The Kinks. Sure, the Fab Four moved the world with their evolving style and prolific songwriting; and the Stones still sell out arenas all over the world; and The Who’s rock operas are second to none. But too often, the contributions that the Kinks made to music have gone unrecognized. I even talked to someone once who referred to them as a “one-hit wonder.” Fie, I say!

Time and time again, the Big Three continue to be praised for their musical accomplishments. The Beatles have their own Rock Band video game franchise; the Stones get the Scorcese treatment; and Who songs are heard by millions every week at the beginning of any CSI episode. And to date, all three bands have also played the Super Bowl Half-Time Show.

But what about The Kinks? They get a Van Halen cover and a cameo on the Juno soundtrack. Sure, they’re in the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame – and rightly so – but it seems they never achieved that same immortality in the public’s consciousness. Why? One could say it’s because they were too far ahead of their time, but a lot of it has to do with a union dispute that got them banned from playing in the States when the Beatles, the Stones, and The Who catapulted to mega-fame. For that and other business-side reasons, Ray Davies & Co. never got the credit they deserved.

Not to take anything away from the Holy Trinity, whose contributions have been plenty and substantial, but there’s a compelling argument to be made for The Kinks to be up there with them (if not – gasp – above them). Through Ray Davies’ clever lyrics and his brother Dave’s groundbreaking guitar sound (and spine-tingling vocal harmonies), the Kinks have a rich catalog of catchy tunes that everyone can relate to on some level. They’re fantastic storytellers whose songs inspire thought, capturing the complexities of daily life, from the mundane to the absurd.

The Kinks officially broke up in 1996 after decades of creative tension, surely amplified by the Davies brothers’ tumultuous relationship.  Each brother has put out a bunch of solo stuff, and despite a few setbacks like Ray getting shot and Dave suffering a stroke (both in 2004), fans continue to hope for an eventual comeback.  There’s even a documentary hitting the festivals right now called Do It Again, which chronicles journalist Geoff Edgers’ personal quest to reunite The Kinks – with commentary from famous Kinks fans like Sting and Clive Davis.  But should a reunion never materialize, there’s still a rich and timeless catalog of music to reflect on.

So I thought I’d put together some of the reasons I love The Kinks, and why it’s such a mystery to me that they never enjoyed the same commercial success as their contemporaries.  To me, there is simply no other band as under-rated and undervalued as Ray Davies and The Kinks.

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10) “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” – Single B-side (1966)

‘Cause, really, they’re not like everybody else. This angsty tune sums up a lot of the rebel attitude that the Kinks inspired. A real outcast’s anthem, it also foreshadows the mood and style of “punk rock” years before the term even hit our cultural lexicon.

9) “Shangri-La” – Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969)

This tune is off of Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), a concept album about the hardships of life in post-war Britain and the desire to start anew. Lyrically, it’s a sarcastic look at cozy suburban life, and realizing that home can be both a haven and a prison. Musically, it’s got everything. It really shows off the band’s versatility. It starts off soft and acoustic; then the horns come in, followed by powerful harmonies that intensify until the song’s climax; throw in a key change and some power chords, and you have one of the most beautifully crafted pop songs of the 20th century.

“Lola” – Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970)

A real cheeky anthem for the Kinks, and an instant classic. I’ve been to a few Ray Davies show, and I’ve never heard so many people singing in unison about (SPOILER ALERT) a transvestite.

7) “Harry Rag” - Something Else by The Kinks (1967)

You don’t hear a lot of songs in popular music that revolve around smoking cigarettes, and how it unites people from all walks of life. Well, it did until the health nuts ruined smoking for everyone (I kid the health nuts.)

6) “Celluloid Heroes” - Everybody’s in Show-Biz (1972)

This is the first song I ever heard by The Kinks. It’s a hauntingly melancholy tune about the dangers of Hollywood through the haunted souls on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And it’s still so relevant today. You could easily substitute the tortured stars and starlets of yore with any name in a tabloid headline.

5) The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968)

Released only a year after the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, this concept album features a look at small-town life and mourns the loss of childhood relics like the “Village Green,” and that friend who moved away whom you never saw again (“Do You Remember Walter?”)

4) “Sunny Afternoon” – Single (1966)

One of my all-time favorites. It’s an ironic little tune about falling from grace, losing everything, and reflecting on the simpler things – the quiet peace of a “Sunny Afternoon.”

3) “Waterloo Sunset” – Something Else by The Kinks (1967)

Whenever he plays in the States, Ray Davies says the audience probably won’t understand this song because it’s about watching the sun set over his North London home. But really, it’s just a simple and beautiful soft ballad with great harmonies.

2) “Dead End Street” – Single (1966)

It’s a sad little song about the frustration of living in poverty. Accompanied with a few horns, it’s melancholy but also rebellious. A poor man’s cry to arms, if you will.

1) “You Really Got Me”/”All Day and All of the Night” – (1964)

Legend has it that guitarist Dave Davies (frontman Ray’s brother) invented that dirty, distorted sound by shredding the speaker cone of his amplifier with his mother’s knitting needles. The Kinks were also one of the first bands to use power chords way before anyone had conceived of Hard Rock, Punk, and Grunge. (Admittedly, Link Wray deserves a lot of credit for power chord, too). Side note: Record company execs originally rejected these early recordings, saying no one wants to listen to a guitar that sounds like a barking dog.

—

And here are some more songs worthy of a good listen:

“Alcohol” - Muswell Hillbillies (1971)

“Well Respected Man” – Kwyet Kinks (1965)

“Autumn Almanac” – Single (1967)

“Ape Man” - Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970)

“Till the End of the Day” – The Kink Kontroversy (1965)

“Victoria” - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire (1969)

“I Need You” – Single B-Side (1965)

“She’s Got Everything” – Four More Respected Gentlemen (1968)

“Animal Farm” – The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1969)

“Picture Book” – The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1969)

What’s your favorite Kinks tune?  Are you a long time fan or a new recruit?  Is their contribution to music as significant as those of the Beatles, the Stones, and The Who?

Anime, or Japanese animation originated way back in 1917, but it’s only really caught on in the west within the last 20-30 years. The term itself is an abbreviated pronunciation in Japanese of “animation.” Anime, like its book form counterpart manga (Japanese Comics), has a large audience in Japan with an ever increasing audience in the United States. Both, hand drawn and computer animated anime exists.

Recently, anime has come to be considered an art form developed in Japan. In fact, you’ll see the word “anime” in the English dictionary defined as “an animation technique developed in Japan” or “an art form developed in Japan”. Average people like you and me, however, just see it as a great form of art that with the right characters, plot, and character development can really draw you in and make you addicted to this form of animation.

Anime is typically identified by its “big eyes, small mouth” characteristics. But, styles can vary widely depending on the artist or the animation studio. Some artists use a more realistic looking approach while others use a more “cartoon” driven style. Some styles, like in Pokemon for example, do not allow for any nationality identification. Thus clarifying that anime does not have a common identifiable style. But, generally, the most common form of anime drawings include “exaggerated physical features such as large eyes, big hair and elongated limbs… and dramatically shaped speech bubbles, speed lines and onomatopoeic, exclamatory typography.” (Taken from Wikipedia article on anime.)

Anime distribution companies handle the licensing and distribution of a series to other parts of the world. Take, for example, Inuyasha, which aired in Japan and then a year or so later was licensed in America by Viz Media. Viz then took the series and dubbed it into English for airing on Cartoon Network from August 31, 2002 through October 27, 2006. Subsequently, the DVDs for the series were released, as is common in for anime with the option to watch it with the original Japanese dubbing with English subtitles. Sometimes, the licensing studio edits out various cultural aspects of a series in an attempt to make it more easily understood in the country in which the series is being aired. This practice has some die-hard fans foaming at the mouth, because they do not think the original storyline or animation should be altered.

Frequently, anime can be found on the internet “fansubbed” even though it can be illegal according to copyright laws in various countries. Many fansub groups do not sub nor distribute the anime for profit, which brings in ethical implications when discussing this particular phenomenon. When a series in licensed in a certain country, the fansub groups tend to cease subtitling and distribution. In one event, a licensing company even thanked the fansub culture for helping to make a certain series wildly popular.

This is how I will always remember Michael best. I think he’ll be remembered similarly to Elvis ~ Sure he changed a lot and became something else over time, but in my memory Michael at his peak never faded. I know everyone is going to be writing about Michael Jackson. I know it’s going to be happening all year, and we’re going to see a million unauthorized autobiographies come out. I guess I just want to take a moment to remember the ten ways I’ll remember him. Some of them are good, and some of them are bad.

It’s strange to look at someone’s life that I thought about nearly as much as my own. It’s bizarre because I’ve been thinking about him a lot this year. I don’t really know why, but he’s been on my mind quite a bit. I got sort of obsessed actually, and was intent on writing some gigantic article. I have to admit that it would have been quite different than the one I’m putting down today. It’s just that ~ he was very much a part of my childhood. He was at his height when I was finding heroes, and he became one of those people I wanted to emulate. Then later on when he fell from grace and became human it was hard to remember what I had found in him that was so important to begin with. It goes without saying that he cared about humanity and his fans. That I do know and have always seen. What follows are the 10 most memorable moments in my life with Michael Jackson.

10. The first CD I ever bought was HIStory at CD Depot. I was at the store, and I remember being ultra excited to finally own one of my own. I never let that CD set out of my sight, and I listened to it nonstop for years until they were so scratched I couldn’t go a beat without hearing a skip.

9. Watching Carlton do a spot on Michael Jackson after really believing he couldn’t dance.

8. Getting to see one of those awesome red jackets from Thriller up close. It wasn’t Michael’s ~ it was just someone who had bought a knock off. But I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

7. Watching MJ’s transformation video. I caught “the transformation” once awhile back, but it wasn’t until this year that I got into it. Which is to say that I just got wrapped up in how much he had changed over the years. I started reading blogs about it, and looking at what he was supposed to look like if he hadn’t gotten so much surgery. It didn’t end with Michael either. I started getting into botched celebrity surgery in general and it became a real problem. After a few months I just had to put it away because I just didn’t see things right anymore.

6. Watching “Childhood” on repeat a few hundred times. At first I really loved this video. The message seemed really clear to me. Michael missed out on his childhood, people were honestly confused about him, and the video always made me nostalgic for my own. Later on it grew to have a completely different meaning in my mind, and it seemed more like a confession wrapped in lyrics.

5. Finding out about Michael’s first run in with the law. It was pretty hard to get my mind around it. The debacle came at a time when I was already pretty disillusioned with Pee Wee Herman, and that alone had bummed me out pretty bad. This was the fall from grace that pretty much jaded Michael in my mind for the rest of my life.

4. The hype around the music video Scream was palpable. I waited weeks for this thing to come out, and was glued to the news trying to get a clue what the hell it was about. All I kept on hearing about was how expensive it was, and how important it could be. It felt like those two hour delay snow days where instead of enjoying the time I had I would spend it watching to see if we’d get a four hour delay. Then if we did I would continue to stare until they told me school was closed due to weather conditions. When the video finally was unveiled I was mesmerized.

3. Watching Thriller for the first time on MTV in Puerto Rico around midnight on an old busted up couch. I remember being so scared I literally jumped behind the couch for cover when he became Zombie Michael.

2. Desperately trying to learn how to Moonwalk after I watched Moonwalker. I think it was at Carlos Santiago’s house when I first attempted to dance like him. Man I was (and continue to be) a piss poor dancer. These two videos below were the parts that I rewinded and played until the tapes were barely watchable. They weren’t even mine. Carlos, I owe you a couple of new VHS tapes.

2. Captain EO in 3D at DisneyWorld. Man for everyone who missed out on this spectacle I am sorry. I remember coming out of the theater after having watched it and thinking it was the most technologically advanced film I had ever seen in my life. I mean (WTF) Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas made this happen?!

It just wouldn’t be appropriate if I didn’t add a Family Guy clip in.

1. Watching Bad and Fat back to back. I loved the music video to Bad, and really wanted to be the guy who rolled up the garage door. Then when Weird Al Yankovic came out with Fat it gave a whole new dimension to parody videos. I used to take out a roll of Chocolate Chip cookies, and let the good times roll for nights at a time. Strangely enough I started this ritual in Junior year of high school when Jamie, a fellow poptenner, got the Weird Al compilation on VHS. All I could embed for you was the long version of Bad because they seem to have disabled all the others… But if you haven’t seen the extended edition… it’s worth it just once.

After all is said and done you just can’t take away how much he meant to all of us. He was a unique genius. He may or may not have done terrible things. He was one of my childhood heroes nonetheless, and that is something I will never take away from him.

At E3 2009, Microsoft unleashed a demon.

A week has gone by, and for people like me (gamers) the words Project Natal already mean something. If they don’t mean something to you (or if you missed Vic’s earlier post), let me try to sum it up: it’s a game platform where you don’t need a controller. You just sit (or stand) in front of the screen, and move, and things happen.

More on Natal, and plenty o’ other stuff, after the jump.

A video’s worth a thousand words, so here’s Microsoft’s pitch:

Now here’s what I think is interesting. There were two distinct responses to Project Natal. One was the nerdgasm: OMGOMGZOMGOMFGQOMG!!111!1. And let’s be honest, if this does a quarter of what Microsoft says it does, all those 1′s are warranted. We are staring down the barrel of some severely 21st century shit… even if we have seen this kind of motion capture before, we’ve never seen it outside a carefully controlled, very expensive box. Natal is going into thousands of homes. That’s something to get worked up about, right?

But some folks, such as Tycho from Penny Arcade, had a very different reaction to Natal. He’s pretty eloquent when he wants to be (which he usually does) so I’ll just quote him directly below:

“In general, the freaky-deaky augmented video mechanisms presented by Microsoft and Sony are inert for us – that is to say, we have no reaction to them whatsoever. Absent anything beyond minigames and puppet shows, I don’t know how to contextualize this technology. I can’t be certain that it has ramifications of any kind for the games I like to play, the ones my friends like to play, or for the games that built this industry.”

That’s a hell of a lot of syllables that, at first glance, seemed to add up to three letters: “meh”. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to agree with his reaction. I’m impressed by Natal. But at this point, I’m with him. I’d rather see another great game experience than another “new way to play”.

The big companies are following the Wii in an attempt to find the next great controller… and it’s all happening because the big companies want to “open up the market” of games. They want the young girls, the senior citizens, the obese, the Zoroastrians… any demographic that, for some reason or other, has been turned off by digital interactivity. So they’re making simulations: bowling, tennis, golf, power walking, that look like real activities, and that control like real activities.

That’s interesting to me, but as Tycho said: these virtual approximations aren’t what drew me in to this industry… and I think we’ll find, they’re not thing that will keep people interested once the novelty wears off. If you REALLY want to go bowling, you’re going to pick up a bowling ball, not a shiny white remote*.

Eventually, the industry is going to be left, once again, with the gamers. The folks who nearly pissed their pants with excitement watching the trailer for The Wizard back in 1989, and their ever-expanding progeny. It didn’t take much to get us hooked. Two buttons are enough… hell, one button has been sufficient in some cases. Since I first started playing games, I’ve just wanted to jump into another world. I wanted to find something completely beyond the realm of the real. The less I had to think about my arms, legs and face while I was doing it, the better. Just as long as I could immerse myself in the puzzle of the next moment: how to get Mario through World 8-1, or open the book of Atrus, or beat up some street punks as an insanely buff elected official named Hagar.

What I ask for is, in some ways, a trickier proposition for the Microsofts of the world. I want new stories, new places. I want new things to do, not new ways to simulate my commute. Furthermore, I think I’m not alone among gamers in wanting more experiences with depth, where what we do feels important and interesting (and hopefully, more strategically deep than swinging our arms and hoping for a hit).

The thing from E3 that got me most excited isn’t likely to revolutionize the realm of controls. It’s just a new game from a very talented team, who are making their fantasy duet of “Ico” and “Shadow of the Colossus” into a trilogy.

*****

*If they’re physically able, of course. But games for disabled folks is a whole ‘nother tangent.

Nintendo, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Nin-ten-do: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Nin. Ten. Do.

In my lifetime, if there were a nostalgic image that could sum up pretty much all the good feelings and bad feelings about my childhood, it would be the original Nintendo Entertainment System. NES for short. Ninnie Ninnie Tennie Tennie Doey Doey to my friend John Martin from across the cul-de-sac.

I was the kind of kid who jumped Mario (from Super Mario Bros) with my entire body in real life. It brought me the greatest joy when I made it to level 8-1. The most anger when I couldn’t get past 1-4 in Kid Icarus. The most sadness when Final Fantasy 1 ended. The best sense of teamwork when we (bro and I) beat Crystalis. Yes, in those days there was nothing Nintendo did wrong except steal hours of my life away- but then again, I gave them willingly.

I bought Gameboy, then Gameboy Color. I played Alleyway and Tetris constantly.

Sega Genesis came out, and since Super Nintendo hadn’t, we (my brother and I) got that. For a short time it was good. Games like Altered Beast, Sonic, Battletoads, and Streets of Rage 2 made it worthwhile. Finally Super Nintendo was released, and I could not wait to get my hands on the new system. I was die hard. I traded in one for the other, and was so pleased with the new console. Super Mario Kart was an addiction, and Final Fantasy III became my favorite game of all time. There was no stopping Nintendo.

In November of 1994 the ill-fated Sega Saturn joined the console market. I had nothing against Sega, and even though their console met failure, I wished them well on their next try- which would be many years later. My friend Chris Baily drew the cartoon on the left in seventh grade, and it illustrates the dying brand. A month or so later the Sony Playstation arrived. I didn’t know too much about it and didn’t care. I was in love with my Super Nintendo ~ smiles ear to ear.

Like every other aficionado, I was excited for the release of the Nintendo Ultra. Later the name was dropped for 64 which surprised me a little, because a silly bit-number was definitely not as cool sounding as Ultra. A few rumors started going around about the weird new controller, and even that didn’t sway me. The first scare I had was when the management made an announcement that Nintendo would become more family-friendly.

In the past many of the games for the brand were for general audiences, but I never got the sense that they were specifically designed for children. When the Nintendo 64 came out, I knew something had gone awry at HQ. Mario 64 was unbelievably good, but the cartoon ‘look’ had been given a childlike appeal. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Killer Instinct were some of the only mature games out there. I longed for poor taste titles like Rush ‘n’ Attack. Instead Mario Party came out in droves, and cemented my disdain for these so called “party games”. I wish I had never heard the term. Sure, they were selling more to younger audiences, but the gamer audience was getting lost in the fray.  What this console solidified was that Nintendos were bought solely for their 1st party games. Thank goodness for Mario Kart 64 and Super Smash Bros.

Then something terrible happened. An announcement was made by Squaresoft that they were going to make Final Fantasy VII for the Playstation. The first thought I had was, “What the Hell? How did I not play the other three?” But soon my frustration became chagrin. I didn’t own a Playstation at all.

I blamed Squaresoft. How was I supposed to know any better? I was still young, and I didn’t know that Nintendo made it hard for third party companies to build software for them. Sony made different sorts of deals with its clientele, and Squaresoft made a simple business decision. In my eyes, though, they had become complete traitors to ‘the Nintendo Cause’. I didn’t even know there was a cause like that until it was spoken, and then I had a consumer’s grudge.

When Final Fantasy VII hit stores it was praised by critics everywhere. A friend of mine had the game so I watched the first cinematic sequence. It was unlike any 3D game animation I had ever seen, and I was smitten. I wanted to play it so badly, but I didn’t want to defect from Nintendo.

The illustration on the right was also created by Chris Baily. The theory behind it was to give Cloud a little bit of the Simon Belmont arrogance from Captain N the Gamemaster. It serves to portray how, as a youth, little things like this can have such a bizarrely serious impact. More importantly, it displays a young consumerist mind at work.

Six months went by, and I finally concocted a plan with my fellow author here Jamie Antonisse. The only way to give Squaresoft the middle finger while still buying the console and game was by paying for it in exact change. I know this makes no sense at all, but we were young. Our understanding of the word ‘Ironic’ still came from Alanis Morissette. So we took all the change we had accrued in our piggy banks over the last five years, counted out the cost to the last penny, put it in a lunchbox, and brought it to Toys ‘R’ Us.

It really didn’t hit us until we made it to the cash register with a Playstation and Final Fantasy VII that the joke would be on the cashier. It was her third day on the job, and two bitter Nintendites dropped pounds of change onto the counter. She had no idea what to do but count out the change. Her manager laughed at her misfortune. Jamie and I looked at each other puzzled. What had we done? The middle finger was pointed directly at ourselves. There was no vindication in our purchase, and money was just money to Squaresoft.

A few years went by, and the Sega Dreamcast came out. This was Sega’s Alamo, now cornered by two giants with Microsoft entering the arena as well, it seemed almost inevitable that this once titan was destined to fall. The real unfortunate part in retrospect was that Sega had actually kept Nintendo honest. Sega had been the edgier brother ~ always trying to do something just a little more bizarre than their counterpart. This console epitomized what made Sega great all those years. Crazy Taxi and Jet Grind Radio bring back some of my fondest memories to this day. I still hear the echoes from the former- “Let’s go make some CRaaazzzY Money!”. Even though it officially left the market in 2001, software companies continued to develop for this system until 2006. The strangest part of its history came recently in 2009, when a surge of Dreamcast sales proved that dead consoles never really die.

Either way I continued on to buy the PS2 because I knew they were going to have all the great third party games including Grand Theft Auto III. Rockstar Games changed the landscape of adult gaming for good with this one, and broadened the growing chasm between Sony and Nintendo. Or maybe it was Nintendo’s fault. It was here that I started looking at Nintendo’s decisions, and really wondering why they had stopped trying to appeal to me.

I picked up the Gameboy Advance. Tried out the PSP. I played through Advance Wars in a week. This was all well and good, but I wanted to sink my teeth into another console.

Meanwhile at Nintendo HQ the Gamecube was being readied for stores. Miyamoto was claiming such brilliance and innovation, it was hard not to be excited for the arrival of his console. Then I played Luigi’s Mansion. Saying I was underwhelmed is a massive understatement. This console was barely a reinvention of the 64, which lacked luster to begin with.

Usually when a console comes out later the graphics have been made to a better standard, but the Gamecube was missing that update. A big claim to fame was the moderate price, but if you bought into the party games you’d end up spending all your money on controllers anyways. The worst part was that for the first year and a half I didn’t like a single game I bought. It was pitiful, and it left me with a sense of emptiness. Chris’s art on the right serves to portray how Nintendo got fat and lazy.

Where were all the great first party games I had been assured? What was I supposed to do with Mario Sunshine other than spit water everywhere? Why was it all getting kiddier? Was it just my getting older that caused the divide with Nintendo or did they stop caring about me? Finally I got Super Smash Bros Melee, but it was too little too late. Gamecube marked Nintendo’s first real failure.

When Microsoft announced the XBOX I was completely against it. Like any purist a gigantic conglomerate jumping into my market was unwanted. Then I started playing Halo at a friend’s house, and it was fantastic. The graphics on the system were stunning, and I knew it was time to make the switch. I watched DVDs on my XBOX and PS2 happily. Why I couldn’t do that on my Gamecube was yet another nail in the coffin.

Time passed and the juggernauts readied themselves for the next match up. XBOX 360 came out first to what I thought was a soft launch. The graphics were really terrific, but the games weren’t up to par just yet. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was still high on my list of things to play. The staying power of the GTA series after it’s finished is pretty unbelievable when I sit down to think about it.

That entire year I was waiting for the big one. The inevitable release of the Nintendo Wii. From what everyone was saying at E3, this would shake the gaming universe forever. I couldn’t wait to play it. As per usual with Nintendo it was lacking in titles for its launch, but that didn’t stop me from buying it on on day one, lining up at 5am, in the cold, in The Bronx. Wii Sports was fun as hell. The gaming experience was cool and different. The kinks in this celebrated demo would be resolved when a REAL game came out for the system- was what I thought at the time. But as new things trickled out they all seemed to reinforce how limited the controller was. Games of skill felt more like games of chance. Boxing felt more like flailing. WarioWare was fun, intentionally ADD, and held my attention for two days exactly. The more games I played, the more they all felt like WarioWare. I longed for longevity in my gameplay. The Wii’s focus had completely moved on from me as a gamer. I ended up where most frustrated NinVets do, the Virtual Console. I could play all the old games I still loved, but I was aching for something fun and new. After a long wait Mario Galaxy came out. It’s hard not to love, but one game for an entire console? It’s just not right.

I had a choice ~ Buy the way overpriced Playstation 3 with a few games, or buy the cheaper XBOX 360 with tons of games. I went 360 and left the last vestiges of my Nin-Faith at the door. Wii proved that Nintendo had turned its back on me.  The 360 on the other hand seemed to be tailored for me. I bought into a live membership, tons of games, the Live Arcade, and was never happier.

It’s hard to believe I’ll ever be an XBOXite. It’s harder to believe I lost my Nin-Faith. I grew up with them, and I suppose as is this case with friendships, we just grew apart. It’s hardest to believe the importance I gave these console wars my entire life, but that’s my story. From one gamer to another.

As the credits roll to ‘State of Play’ we get to see the last dance of the old paper company. The plates are put on these big rollers, sheaves of paper are pulled up into the air with fresh ink plastered upon them, and they are thrown into big vans for distribution. It’s one of the most beautiful and tragic visuals of a dying media. More importantly it’s something that was once modern and is now antiquated all within our lifetimes. The fact that printing presses are a part of this modern society is almost astounding, and seems more a vestige of our giant conglomerates than a need for them. Please take a bow Old Man and accept this lifetime achievement award. Time to move on. All the paper and ink – building individual newspapers for singular consumption – distributing it all over the world – How dated and wasteful!

It reminds me we are a generation stuck in the past (even though its the present right… now), and we are transitioning to a digital lifestyle kicking and screaming. Andy Marino (a fellow author here) and I were discussing books the other day. He is a novelist with three masterpieces under his belt, and is unbelievably sad that these real paperbacks will eventually fall to their digital counterparts. It couldn’t be better for everyone though. We’re at a point where all books can be everywhere. The opportunities that presents to developing countries is unfathomable. All we need to do is make sure that we get some tablets to all corners of the world with some nice wifi signals attached.

Recently I had a conversation with a would be journalist going to Columbia University, and were talking about the death of ‘real reporting’. I’m happy to inform all the naysayers that it’s not going anywhere. It’s just coming at us from more resources, and we are learning how to sift through the endless mounds of media that are being created. Personally, I’m glad that we’re moving towards niche press. Not everything has to be housed under one roof.  In fact it’s that diversity which will give us the freedom to read and understand more within any given field.

The discussion, as always happens with journalism majors these days, arrived at ‘The Big story’.  This is newspaper’s argument that a super sleuth reporter needs major resources to follow leads over an extended period of time. Whenever this comes up I can’t help but think about The Smoking Gun and how they uncovered (after a six week long investigation) that James Frey had lied about the memoir he wrote. Good reporting isn’t going anywhere. I actually think the fact that media is coming from different places is what makes great reporters scared. Perhaps the prose isn’t perfect or the story needs more investigating. Hell, in their shoes I’d be mad too. How do you go into an ever more crowded medium? Which newspaper or blog do you choose to write for? Which is the one that give you the ‘cred’ that you desire? How do you make it to ‘The Show’ (like a New York Times) in these changing days? What if the top isn’t the top anymore? It’s very confusing.

I’m a blogger doesn’t have such a nostalgic ring to it, but wait a decade it will get there. It always does. We have full time Twitterati now, and that is a subclass that will continue to diversify. As the Twitterers specialize further into marketers, news guides, and things of this nature we’ll see a discrepancy form. Similarly to the way that reporters frowned at bloggers we’ll see the same for our Twitterati. “Long form” bloggers will create their own “Show”, and our Twitterati will use that divide to their advantage. I would be surprised if all our news media didn’t become a series of blogs and tweets with tons of videos and podcasts linked into them. Hell – I guess we’re already there. These newspapers just weren’t invited to the party.

Reporting is changing. This digital transparency we’re creating will continue to force accountability on all of us. If anything, websites like Facebook have shown our privacy between one another decreasing. Generally speaking, more of us allow more people into our lives. It’s much harder to hide things from others, and I find myself caring less if people do know more about me. There is an onslaught of personal media beaming out to hundreds of people all the time. We’re writing our digital histories, and we want people to look. Every person I meet has more free time than ever before to express themself. We’re becoming an ever more self involved culture. Many times we only pay attention to the interesting things others are doing so we can write or create something about them. Then we say, “Come look at this awesome thing I made about this other person doing something awesome”.

It used to be difficult to throw your thoughts out to the greater public. With those barriers gone, how easy it is to write to the masses, there is nothing stopping us. It’s the rise of the creative class that is building our new media infrastructure. We’re still just popping our heads out of the proverbial cave in terms of the internet. We always walk out into the light with trepidation because it is that fear of the unknown that makes us human. Yet we always take that step.

I get it – we’re all nostalgic about our paper things, but this change is exciting as it has opened up the gates for countless others to be heard. We all deserve that much. Anyways – it’s my birthday – Here we are in 2009, and I can’t help but want to look around the corner once more. Last night I had the pleasure of checking out the film ‘State of Play’, and it got me thinking.

There are job losses – we’re diving into a depression – as I wrote this days ago wall street was opening to a 400 point drop. Markets were crashing all around the world.

Just yesterday I came back home to see my Super installing a security system. His only words were, “You know – things are going to start changing”. The words resonated… I thought of George R.R. Martin’s saga “the song of ice and fire”, and the quote that inevitably came to mind was “winter is coming”. The people who seem to be locking things up are older. I guess they know what a financial tsunami actually means to our real lives. Honestly I have absolutely no idea, but maybe not having any money to begin with is a part of that.

So what are we supposed to do?

A week or two ago I came upon an article about a guy who goes by the name of Chongo. The article is poetic and captures the magnetism this man must have. For those who don’t know who or what Chongo is consider this a small crash course. He invented big wall climbing, lived in Yosemite National Park for years with other hippies, pondered philosophy & physics for days as he hanged from cliffs, and is homeless by choice.

More about what makes Chongo so bitchin’ after the jump… and what we should be doing in times of woe…

You may think he’s outlandish like Timothy Treadwell from the film “Grizzly Man” (a bear activist who crossed the line to insanity). This is not Chongo. So who is Chongo? Sure he created big wall climbing and he is almost mythical as far as the stories go… But what I like best is that he is a prolific author.

Everything from “The Complete Book of Big Wall Climbing” to the equally necessary companion volume “The Quotable Chongo: On How to Be Bitchin, Volume One”. These two compendiums offer enough insights for any man. However the book that really caught my attention was “The Homeless Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Quantum Theory Without Any Math”.

I immediately wanted it – I went to Amazon to see if the book existed. There was an old copy being sold. I was checking out when I figured maybe I should see if he is still putting out new books. I stumbled upon chongonation.com the one stop shop on the Internet for all things Chongo. The site is really barebones, and whoever is distributing the books has not made for the easiest checkout.

So here is a tutorial… although to this date I have yet to receive my book.

1. Go to your paypal account and give the website money.

2. Leave your email address so they can get the rest of your info later.

3. Wait worriedly as money is taken out of your account, but there is no guarantee that a book will arrive.

4. Write an email to make sure everything is okay.

5. Get a personal reply from Chongo. That’s right Chongo. Who reassures you the book is coming, and that he knows Spanish just in case you would rather speak to him in another language.

So how does this all relate? Good question. Buy Chongo and become Chongo and all will be well? I guess not. Although it’s probably not a bad idea for some.

The first presidential debate is tonight. If you aren’t seeing it with people, you are missing out on rowdy crowds in the great democratic state of New York. If you want somewhere to go click here.

Or go to this url: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/09/get_your_debate_on.html

Personally, I will be at the Tank tonight on 87 Lafayette street at 8pm getting ready for the first big brawl. Leading up to this election has been amazing, and becoming a part of the Manhattan Young Democrats has definitely been a huge part of the whole experience.

I’ve looked on with trepidation as the Republican party has made strides to even out the polls. I was broadsided when they chose Palin as VP. And of course I have been confused and confounded by the Republican leadership throughout. I was interested in why they would say “OK” to a campaign suspension. I think their thought here was that if they couldn’t beat Obama at his game, they would have to look like they were already running the White House. That way they could say “hope all you want with Obama, but we’re already playing the parts of pres and VP”.

So – After all the sweating and yelling and listening to speeches, I’m more than ready. I’m pumped and excited to see how they both come out swinging. Both sides have done their best to lower expectations for their candidate, which is a pretty natural thing to do, so that either way no one can really lose.

All the debate speculation aside I wanted to do a much grander prediction.

I think Obama is going to be the next FDR.

Our economy has just gotten blown up, and we need a catalyst for change. It strikes me as perfect timing for something like FDR’s New Deal. Without any money how can you make jobs? The same way FDR did it. You need a common cause to spur that revolution, and we’re coming directly into our very own green one. So bring on the green revolution which will echo our industrial one, and build America as a progressive nation once again.

Wikipedia says: Roosevelt’s “First 100 Days” concentrated on the first part of his strategy: immediate relief. From March 9 to June 16, 1933, he sent Congress a record number of bills, all of which passed easily.

That’s exactly what Obama’s intentions are. He’s coming in guns a-blazing, and will effectively break through the status quo. I know I should provide a hundred more examples here, but there just is no time right now.

When I was in high school I studied Erasmus and Luther for an entire semester. Erasmus was in charge of the counter-reformation that called for the church to change gradually. He was of the mindset that Catholicism could bend slowly from the inside, and eventually they would do what was right. Of course Luther thought differently, and posted the 95 theses on the door of the church thus creating Lutheranism. I’ve battled long and hard to figure out who was in the right. The major question being can we change things from within or do you have to make some kind of massive break in common ideology to get people going.  After all this time I still do not have the perfect answer. I think change always occurs at times when people see the need for it. Large sweeping changes occur when it is deserved, and people want to get swept up in it. There are so many times when we have clung desperately to the status quo just because everything was generally fine. But in times like we are now seeing, I do believe there is a need to break away. I think there is a need to look at the world differently, and realize change is necessary immediately.  Obama has become a hero in the eyes of our nation. We’ve been singing songs about him like he is a legend already. I’m glad to be part of the chorus who believe. I’m proud to be a part of the group who wants to create change.

It feels like we’re in that part of Transformers where Hot Rod picks up the matrix to light the Autobots darkest hour in the belly of Unicron. The Autobots being the Democrats, Hot Rod being Obama, and the matrix being the presidency.

He’s a symbol the same way FDR was a symbol. I’ll end it here with a quote from FDR that I think resonates with how Obama will run this country:

Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people… This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms.^[26]

My t-shirt of choice is by my favorite comic book artist in the world, Alex Ross’.

Every other conversation I have these days runs along the thread of societal advancement, the future, and our evolution as a species. Of course I land on different sides of the coin in almost every discussion, but all the same they are quite lively. That said Chris and I have talked a lot about transparency in the internet age, and how it has changed the way we do business. Most web companies value this as an asset, but older companies seem to have a harder time with this new set of social standards. What follows below is an interview based on that conversation we had.

- THE INTERVIEW -
CHRIS BAILY ON MARKETING STRATEGY:
TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE

JUAN CARLOS – So we’ve talked about this before, but can you go back to the beginning?

CHRIS – Well I was doing some thinking yesterday, and this is sort of a compilation of stuff we’ve been talking about over the last year. I thought I might try to distill it a little bit.

I was thinking about advertising and marketing and how one can be intellectually and financially honest with people while at the same time asking them to spend money on our products. The general problem I have with advertising is that many companies are acting fundamentally hypocritically when they promote a product. They are trying to convince people that they “need” a particular product or service, while their real motivation is profit. There is too little attention or care for the long term benefit of the customer.

JUAN CARLOS – It seems somewhat inevitable since most companies outsource their marketing programs to other companies who specialize in it. I would be hard pressed to find an advertising company that would reject a big contract for ethical reasons. I suppose it probably happens now and then, but I digress… How do companies care more or less about their customers?

CHRIS – In an efficient market, customers will be adequately informed and can be trusted to make their own decisions, so the company should not impinge on their freedom of choice. In this scenario, McDonalds is absolved from guilt over the fat content of their food because the consumer has made the choice to eat it. In fact, I think that executives at McDonalds may even consider it a moral obligation to its customers to provide them with products they want, regardless of long term consequences. On some level I agree with this idea – I don’t like other people making decisions about what I can and can’t buy. But I want those decisions to be well informed, and I think there is a responsibility for the company to honestly inform me.

JUAN CARLOS: Sure they’re supposed to inform you, but how realistic do they have to be? How visceral should our learning be about the process. In McDonald’s case it seems like you’d be calling for them to show us all of their business practices behind the scenes. It seems unlikely that a giant would every open their facilities to the public in that way. In your case there is something that hits much closer to home – you’re a smoker though. You obviously know the consequences, and those companies inform you of the risk on each pack. Do you blame them anyways?

CHRIS: I am a smoker, so it would be hypocritical for me to blame the tobacco companies for my smoking habit. I am an informed consumer who began smoking when I was well aware of the health consequences. However, the current advertising climate seems designed to obscure and confuse that choice for the average consumer, and that is something I very much disagree with. I don’t blame the tobacco companies for making me smoke, but I still believe that as honest businessmen, they had a responsibility to address health concerns when they knew about them.

JUAN CARLOS: So how do you do it well?

CHRIS: You guys have done a great job of this with Second Skin –

JUAN CARLOS: [Thanks for stroking the ego.]

CHRIS: …Which is why I started thinking about this yesterday. Essentially, you took a subject – online role playing games – that fundamentally interested you and that you generally feel positive about. You are gamers, and you do not believe that video games are inherently bad for society. You then did a careful and even handed analysis of the effect these games have on hardcore players and an examination of the product and the lifestyle it generates. You have maintained that honesty throughout. Yes, you want to make money off this project, but that’s okay, because your motivation for this movie was not financial. Paying for movies is not about supporting greed, but about having the power to continue to bring good products to the marketplace.

JUAN CARLOS: I think a lot of filmmakers share those same ideals. It’s easier to use us as a standard as well because there is something glamorous about making movies. This allows for a loftiness in our ideals that say being a butcher probably wouldn’t. However you cut it though most people making movies right now aren’t making enough money to even go out on a Friday night. We all know about the broken traditional theatrical distribution system we have these days. Where do you think we’re going in that regard? Everything is pretty obviously going online, but at what a cost? Is everything just going to be free?

CHRIS: If we create an environment in which it costs exorbitant amounts of money to protect our content from Piracy and other exploitations, we will be handing more and more power over to the people who can afford to do so – to the detriment of creativity. Easy access to content is important, because it allows for a greater flow of ideas and ultimately, leads to better art. The introduction of radio in the 50s and 60s was viewed as a massive threat to the music industry because it took access control out of the hands of the record companies. Ultimately, it produced one of the most important periods in the history of music because it gave people from different walks of life access to music they may have never heard (The Beatles playing rockabilly and Elvis singing the Blues) . It also produced a thriving music industry that was eventually bolstered by that increase in quality and access. I still believe that the internet will eventually have that kind of effect, and the real trick will be figuring out how to capitalize on it. The movie industry is in a similar position – a huge drop in the cost of production and a massive influx of cheap content will initially destabilize things, but it could also heat up an engine that might lead to an explosion of visual content. I’ll stay general here, because I’m not sure that the conventional movie and TV formats are going to be the way this explosion happens. However, there is so much creativity being generated in the moving image format that it’s got to pop out somewhere…

JUAN CARLOS: Everything is free at this point. I can go online, and download anything. Cheap content devalues filmmakers and filmmaking. Will advertising dollars make the difference here? How do we breakdown the old way of doing things?

CHRIS: Right now, the old system is breaking down because entertainment companies have yet again overplayed their hand. When we shifted to CDs and DVDs in the 90’s, there was no corresponding drop in the price of content. We all know that a CD costs significantly less to produce, yet they were charging significantly more for them. Are they really surprised that people turned to alternative sources of content like mp3s? Can they really make the argument that the cost of producing bands increased so dramatically in a few years that they had to essentially double the price of music? Now they’re screwed, but they also managed to screw everyone else by creating a huge gulf between the consumer and the artist. I will still happily throw a dollar into the hat of a talented street musician, but I have a harder time spending a dollar on Itunes for an extremely talented band, because I have no sense that the majority of that dollar will go to the artist. Plus, I’m suspicious of artists who seem to be making cheap music for a quick buck and a shot at fame, fortune, and hot chicks. That sucks, but luckily, things like the Radiohead model are starting to address it. One of the problems with the consolidated entertainment industry was that people who wanted to buy a Chemical Brothers CD were also being forced to subsidize the Backstreet Boys and countless other pieces of crap. As a consumer, you want to be able to support products that you think are worthwile, and you want the option to pay more for those products, and less for the shitty stuff.

I think there has been a growing consensus among consumers that the only objective way to determine the quality of a product is to get information from an outside party. It has been established that you can’t trust a company’s own information. This is especially bad because it releases the companies from any obligation to truth. The attitude seems to be: “hey – if they think we’re lying anyway – we might as well lie our pants off all the way down the line”.

We have the opportunity to operate with a different attitude – to essentially say – here’s what we like, here’s what we think is important – so you should pay for it, not because we want money, but because you agree with us and you agree with the people who are making it.

I think that companies like a Google and to some extent Apple are already operating on this basis. I think they are making decisions about what they would want, as consumers, and then aggressively pursuing those products. This is the way capitalism should work, although the jury is still out on whether they can maintain that attitude as they gain power.

JUAN CARLOS: So where are we heading in this new future where companies cannot afford to do anything without consumer approval?

CHRIS: In an increasingly transparent world, it seems like this integrity will become more and more important. Developing a reputation for quality should always be a business goal, but in the entertainment world, many consumers have become convinced that companies are just appealing to the lowest common denominator (and rightfully so, in many cases). When we make something in the future we won’t be doing it just because we think it’s going to get us rich. We will be doing it because we believe in what we’re selling. If a company can get that across, they should be able to build a competitive advantage that makes people feel comfortable paying for things.

- END INTERVIEW –

It was the last days of the Apprentice 3. I had met the Donald enough times that I had declined to ride in a limo with him. Which seems silly in retrospect. Either way I knew I didn’t want to do another year of reality shows (even though they are pretty bizarre sometimes).

In the end I was an NYU alumnus with big dreams of directing in the middle of a quarter life crisis trying to figure out what to do with a film degree. I’ll admit that I stared at it once in awhile stuffed in the corner of my closet trying to figure out whether it was two-ply. Most of the time though I was wondering why I hadn’t made those two features that I’d promised myself I would do by the time I was 25.

It was high time to do something. So I started a  company with Peter Brauer called Pure West Documentaries in early 2005. He was a hallmate from NYU with a shiny degree of his own. The company we made wasn’t glamorous. We started out by doing industrial films for non-profits and pharmaceuticals. We got a couple of awards and loaded up on film equipment. We weren’t doing too shabbily which is when we decided it we actually wanted to pursue our dreams instead of becoming financially independent. The only problem was we just didn’t know what do do yet.

By day my life was your classic poor filmmaker trying to get by story. By night (in late 2005) I was an aspiring Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies. My brother Victor had just gotten the game from a friend of his. Had I known then what I know now about MMO’s… Everyone is always gifting the game for one another so they can play together. Ben, my brother’s friend, was really far ahead of us in the grand scheme of things. He was already a major contributor to a city, and deeply entrenched in a guild which was like a second family. The more we played the more his double life fascinated me. By day he was a teacher who was about to get married, and by night he was an important guild officer with serious responsibilities. We couldn’t even go on the adventures he went on because we were mere noobs.  It didn’t take too long before I stopped. Victor had a little more resilience.

One random night my brother was playing with Ben. I was in my room. It was like two nodes converging. I love filmmaking. I love video games. These MMO’s sure are something aren’t they? Virtual worlds are amazingly similar to our real world. Man, I wish I was making a feature film. Why haven’t I made two already? Dammit! What if we made a documentary about MMORPGs? I ran into Victor’s room to tell him. We had made short films since we were kids, and most recently with a couple other buddies of mine, so it was only natural. He loved the idea.

Peter and I started researching MMO’s, and stopped pursuing industrial videos altogether. Victor, who was a teacher at the time, was pitching in as much as he could. It was simply a process of discovery after that as we began to understand how big these alternate universes really were.

Sometime in March Peter started having trouble working at home. I know it sounds like a dream commute, but being alone all the time is creepy. So we figured a good antidote to the blues, and a great aid to the movie would be if he played World of Warcraft. Peter was excited and tenuous about the whole thing. In another life he was a big fan of the game Diablo II. It had been a big time sink, and he thought Warcraft may be similar. In the meanwhile I made a synopsis about what a movie like this might look like. Looking back now it is somewhat laughable. These were our baby steps into a world we didn’t know, and yet there were many millions inhabiting it already. Peter had found an especially interesting thing called ‘goldfarming’ that fascinated us because it proved virtual economies were real economies. Victor then crafted a nice new treatment which we thought read like absolute gold.

Well (we thought) this is a million dollar idea, and someone is definitely going to pour money into us. Even if this is our first movie – it’s just the best idea ever. There is no possible way people aren’t going to fill our pockets with tons of cash to make this one.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)