Culture

The new — the last — Warren Zevon album comes out on August 26th. The buzz is good.

First, watch this (Quicktime, 1.7 megs). Then, read the rest of the Web site. Especially make sure you read the thesis, even though it’s long. You never knew about Disney dissecting fawns before, did you?

Kevin over at funmurphys.com has more thoughts on media (original), following up on his comments here. He’s got an excellent point, which in my book touches on the true value of the Internet: you can get more information faster. Context is what’s valuable, and information provides context. This is one reason I link to conservative blogs as well as liberal blogs. The other reason is because I’ll link anywhere if I get good writing out of it.

Warren Ellis is writing a novel on the Internet. Using LiveJournal. It starts here. You also get occasional comments on LiveJournal itself: Sometimes I think of LiveJournal as the world’s biggest technogoth community. LJ has been both lauded and derided as a space for people with black clothes and strange hair to work out their alienation and disaffection in electronic public. That hasn’t stopped it being successful, and it hasn’t stopped it being a tool for national and international networking. As a piece of “social software,” it’s not flawless, but its influence and effect has been huge. ...

I had an interesting discussion with Jere about the whole flash mob thing, with some random musing on dada. I wound up saying: I’m not sure that there’s not a paradox inherent in the concept. The need to draw in a lot of people conflicts with the need to keep the details under wraps. Once People Magazine does a story on it (which will be next week, I understand), it’s no longer mysterious. ...

Don’t let anyone tell you affirmative action is only for minorities these days. I’m thinking Bishop Caldwell is crazy like a fox — he’s picking up a fair amount of attention, which easily assists with both his stated objectives and any yearning for publicity he might feel.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday than browsing through the Dead Media Working Notes. Don’t miss the uncategorized notes, either. I regard this as a museum of ways in which human beings have tried to touch one another; it strikes me as deeply Cronenbergian. And what goes around, comes around (original).

Pictures of last night’s flash mob are here (original) (mmm, lots of cops), here (original) (mmm, lots of media), and here. I forgot to mention that the Coop had a bunch of copies of Smart Mobs (original) piled up at one of the registers. Lucky guess on someone’s part.

Tonight was the first Boston flash mob (original). (The mailing list isn’t hard to find, but I think I won’t link to it; email me if you want to know.) It went OK. I showed up and got instructions around 6:50, and hit the designated spot at the designated time. People were kind of quiet, as per instructions, but not really. Then someone hushed the crowd, and the crowd obeyed. Cool. ...

Kill Bill is just gonna be a big huge sprawling mess. Hopefully in a good way. Over three hours! Tarantino goes wild! Man, the guy doesn’t have any self-restraint as it is. But I’m gonna see it. I’m even looking forward to it. His lack of self-restraint has led to some amazing things, so what the hell? I’ll think of it as his big unrestrained double album rock opera and see how it sounds.