Fader Magazine is offering It was Written for free at http://www.thefader.com/redstripe.  If that’s not enough , the  jam, last night was catered by Negril, with all the Jamaican delicacies  one could want for,  Radioclit rocked the house, and the free gifts were kinda great , tops being the Red Strip Memory Sticks. 

This need for growth is directly affecting our waistlines. Even food, which was about nurturing and nourishing one’s body and soul, has been degraded, commercialized, and bastardized to the point that most food has become unrecognizable.

Additives, to make foods addictive or give you a sense of hunger even when full, have been developed to keep this year’s numbers higher than last year’s. The more people pile in their faces the better off processed ‘food’ companies are, the more resources get used, and the carbon emissions chasm deepens. If we give them the power to destroy our health and longevity, how pacified we must be.

We may as well change our country’s creed to ‘taking the easy way out’, if we continue to live without regard for the life giving and life-sustaining planet from winch we came. Self-entitlement, to the cornucopia of consumer goods and drive thru disposable lifestyle, may well be our societal downfall.

Globalization was that promise of never-ending growth, but its pitfalls are all too apparent these days. The main hiccup with constant growth is nothing can grow infinitely.

Can a re-localization of our economies and society be our salvation?

Neighbor helping neighbor was the relationship of reciprocity that our human society was built on. Sacrificing for the common good. These days individuality or a ‘society of self’ has arisen mainly due to urban sprawl, autos, and marketing.

This is greatly evident with conservative America’s reaction to the 3% tax hike that was passed by the Obama administration. Opponents are so afraid that they would have to give something to someone who had less; they called for revolution against the government. That’s some selfishness.

Of course, there are those that drain the social services, but if we looked out for one another more – than the strain on the system, and cost of providing social services would diminish, because people wouldn’t get to be so far gone. The 50’s are idealized not because times were simpler, but because there was still a sense of civic duty, and of responsibility for one another.

Communal living is a huge step from our self-saturated society, but undoubtedly a necessary one. Because the further we can spread what is left of our limited planetary resources the better for all of us. Think about it evangelical set – W.W.J.D., treat his fellow man, as he would want to be treated, and never let us forget, that we will be judged on how we treat the least among us. Probably.

This is exactly what I mean when I talk about 1974 + the Hippie Tinge being real big for Fall ’08. When the last dark vestiges  of the 1960s meet druid pagan frocks they land squarely in the mid 70s.  The Best thing about simulated nostalgia is you get all the heavy feelings without doing all the hard work.

This type of art is concerned with presenting the everyday, overlooked, functions of the world in striking visualizations of pure data. My first encounter with this type of art making was when I researched Radiohead’s latest video. I found a group of UCLA researchers, that had inspired the video’s director, were using laser to record the movement of aerial vehicles and compiling the data into still images.

This time around the BBC presents data visualization, in Britain From Above, through time lapse video using among other things GPS signatures or trails. The images are not of humans, but their systems, and it’s truly amazing to see so many people interacting on such a large scale. These vids makes all our randomness – seem magical.

Link to videos

Tropic Thunder looks like it could be really funny. Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. are all funny dudes, and great actors. But one thing about the film I can’t understand is the modern day black face Downey dons for his part. Come on were Will Smith or Mekhi Phifer unavailable, or is it for comedic and or publicity’s sake? I’ll continue to do more research into why the choice. I do wonder if the film will get any backlash or negative publicity for such a risky move? Even in an age where a biracial man may soon be President of the United States of America… best to believe race is still a divisive, and mighty touchy subject for many.

I’m all for public art. All the discussion, culture, and revenue it brings to the city are good. It’s exactly what a world class city like New York, New York needs to have, and NYC does it well. Now with the NYC Waterfalls and previously a few years back with The Gates New York has shone and proved that it’s got the vision, connections, ability, follow through and most of all money to turn an abstract concept that pertains to public space and its use into a concrete and enjoyable diversion.

My only question is could the money allocated for these public projects be used in a more thoughtful, more useful for more people kind of a way?

The Gates was estimated to cost $21 million, the NYC Waterfalls cost between $9-11 million to be erected. I understand that a lot if not most of the funds for these projects came from Mayor Bloomberg’s Public Art Machine, a private foundation for such endeavors. Couldn’t Mayor Bloomberg or the city set up a money raising machine to help the NYC homeless population, or help the MTA with what seems to be it’s eternal lack of funds. A fund  to fix roads, for public housing, school lunches,the list is endless?

I also understand the fact that the expected revenue from tourists to the NYC Waterfall project is $55 million, and that the Gates had over 16 million visitors during it’s16 day run, making NYC lots of money and just as importantly inspiring people, and I’m not foolish enough to down play the importance of inspiration.

But maybe I am naive enough to think that if we, and I mean WE as a society and culture can build multi-million dollar saffron cloth gates in parks, and scaffolding backed cascading waterfalls in a time of credit crunch, housing crisis ,and general economic downturn then WE can do things only cautiously imagined before to help the poor and vulnerable in our society.

I always love comparisons and it makes it even sweeter when it’s a comparison of two things I support so strongly Mad Men, the show about liquor swilling, lovablely hateable, non-P.C. ad executives from the 1960′s, and G.Q., the iconic men’s magazine celebrating 50 years of dictating classic American style seem to share the same aesthectic leanings. That is classic American business and sportswear. An appreciation of women boarding on objectification, and the whole black and white silhouette figure icon. Kind of noir, sort of classic American. Kudos to both

One thing that has fascinated, surprised and horrified me to a certain extent, is a phenomenon that I call PEAK Williamsburg. The hippest neighborhood in New York City, arguably in the entire U.S., is growing and changing. Some folks thinks it’s great. Ask any NYU student stumbling giddily down Bedford Ave on any weekend night. Other folks are not so excited. Think families and people who have lived in Williamsburg for a while or for generations, but are now being pushed, or more accurately priced out to make way for condos, yuppie dream castles, and nubile, hipper than thou Midwesterners. The pro and cons of gentrification are complex and this is not a forum in which I want to make value judgments on the current situation that is Peak Williamsburg. Instead what I’d like to point out the 4 C’s of Peak Williamsburg. The increase of these 4 C’s usually can be made applicable to most any area that is in the middle of gentrification or at least areas experiencing what I’ll call for my purposes here a non organic turnover in population. That means a neighborhood whose residents are fundamentally shifting not due to age, birth , and or death rates. These 4 C’s do not apply to neighborhoods experiencing fluctuating crime rates due to focus or neglect of a city’s limited allocations and resources, or lack there of, or anomalies like when interstates are built in the middle of existing communities either. These 4 C’s are limited to shifts where economic upgrading and or development act as overt driving forces

1.Condos- The most visible sign that things are changing anywhere is when new and in some opinions more attractive residences spout up like weeds in a garden of what some may term dilapidation.

A bike ride through the main thoroughfares and back streets of Williamsburg show that while the U.S. is in a housing and credit crisis, contractors building yuppie dream castles and condos filled with modern luxuries in hip neighborhoods are fairing relatively well.

Though it could take years for all this new housing to be filled, the landscape and feel a of neighborhood are changed immediately.

2.Cops- Neighborhoods become more ‘desirable’ when residents are more affluent for obvious reasons. Property values rise with amenities like restaurants and shopping areas. Parks, lawns and streets become more manicured, and once non traditional or historically non-typical residents move in the final piece for a neighborhood’s safety profile is set in place. Who does not want to live in such a neighborhood ? What locality does not want more of these kinds neighborhoods?

The answers to those two questions are everyone and all respectively. One major way localities make this dream a reality is an increase in police presence.

3.Cabs- When a neighborhood changes status from a merely residential one to one of destination, leisure, culture, and or commerce not only localities, but business owners,and community members who will gain from these increased activities in said neighborhood want to make it as easy as possible to get there. As a result of this influx of leisure, culture, and commerce, both the parties spending time and money, and those serving the parties spending time and money in this neighborhood want it to be as easy possible to get to this neighborhood as opposed to a hassle. Hence transportation to and from this neighborhood becomes easier to navigate and more abundant.

4.Chain stores- Once a desirable , safe, easy to get to place exists in our capitalist society, who wants to be a part of it?

Well business of all types of course want to play a role in this blooming/booming. So the increase in chain stores as opposed to mom and pop or smaller locally owned and controlled stores unable to pay higher rent, and or property taxes increase, and attempt to fill the needs of would be consumers.

the former gritty Kellogg's Diner,all shiny like a Puff Daddy video

Of course the effects of the increase of these 4 C’s is complex with both positive and negative consequences. Often times the people most responsible for the negative effects, who reap the most benefit are the ones to complain most about Williamsburg just not being what it was, aka, losing it’s appeal. It’s ironic, as ironic as hipsters making fun of hipsters for merely being hipsters. It also a cycle. Perhaps not as out of our hands as the cycle of life, but a cycle that has to and must continue in the current state of the culture and time in which we live.

Digital photography, the immediacy of image creation, and instant picture sharing has fueled the amateur photographer like never before. This digital imaging revolution is a huge component of the web aesthetic. Seemly more real, true, and gritty this direction is a ‘perfect companion for your web 2.0 marketing strategy’. Emulations of amateurism have gained popularity as a more sincere form of advertising photography.

American Apparel is an obvious early purveyor of this amateur aesthetic.  It probably didn’t hurt that in the beginning, Dov, the CEO seducer, took the photos. He managed to get hot young models to pose for next to nothing, then exploited the spontaneous feel – by photographing without flattering lighting or sets; instead the girls were in bed or somewhere similarly intimate. Of course, they were AA clad usually in a state of undress.

Now it would seem that Urban Outfitters is finally catching on, much like their shoppers.

Here’s an example from the fall catalog.

These photos work so well because they are meant to look like user-generated advertising and they communicate to the viewer a harsh realism, instead of a pure fantasy.  Girls and boys next door caught in sexy scenarios hits closer to home than supermodel glamor.

Even if we both know we might never score an AA model.