Foul Play Giant

I've always had a bad taste in my mouth from the folks who gush over the work of Shepard Fairey. And now I'm snickering to myself that his legal counsel is abandoning him after it was revealed that he lied about which source he stole from / traced over for the Obama Hope poster.

Fairey represents a lot of what I don't like about the art world - arrogant double-standards. His work is entirely derivative if not outright stolen, which in itself is not offensive to me. There's nothing wrong with appropriation when proper attribution is given. Yet he continually passes himself off as original, and profits from creativity that simply wasn't his - without giving proper credit where it is clearly due. In fact, he outright lies about his sources. And Fairey is clearly lying for the sake of his own celebrity and profit, not for the sake of art.

I've always insisted that the work that put him on the map, Andre the Giant has a Posse and the resulting Obey work, were obviously inspired by John Carpenter's They Live - which starred a pro wrestler and featured subliminal outdoor advertising messages that read "obey" (among other Big Brotherly imperatives). Too many coincidences.

Given that it's now common practice to sue musicians for sampling even small portions of someone else's work without permission and/or payment, Fairey deserves to be held responsible for his actions. It's clear that his primary concern is being a celebrity; perhaps his ego prevents him from being honest about his work, his process and his tremendous debt to pop and fringe culture that preceded him and all of his sordid merchandising.

Fairey is complicit in the ugly corporatization of celebrity - at the expense of honesty, integrity and authenticity. It pains me that only the Obama poster is drawing this fact into the public discourse.

In B-Flat Two-Point-Oh

Check out in Bb 2.0. It's the result of a collaborative video/music (okay, multimedia) mixing project. It goes at least one step further than Kutiman's "Thru You" by putting the controls at your fingertips.

Spotted via Create Digital Music.

(Our) Life Inc.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

It is with some regret that I admit, I've had a galley copy of Douglas Rushkoff's new book Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back which I have been unable to devote enough attention. Between medical issues and my wedding, I just haven't had the time to sit and read much. Hopefully I can squeeze out a review before the book hits store shelves in just under two weeks (Sorry, Douglas, I really appreciate the advance copy and hope this doesn't negate my chances for advances of future publications). Everyone can read Chapter One here courtesy of BoingBoing, where Rushkoff has been guest blogger this week.

For the time being, I highly recommend Life Inc The Movie (above), which sets up the book's premise. In light of the current economic woes worldwide, I think it is crucial to examine the path that got us here: corporatism. You may be surprised to learn how it all began, and even more surprised to discover how much corporatism has become ingrained in the way we behave. Pre-order Life Inc. on Amazon.

UPDATE:
Great continuation of the conversation, with more excerpts from the book, here at BoingBoing: Everything's Open Source but Money.

99 Internet Things

I have no idea who Greg Rutter is, or whether this is a definitive list, but it does appear to have a lot of the big hits on it. It IS missing Mahir Cagri's I Kiss You, which (in its original form) was a "viral" success that arguably gave the world its first Internet celebrity. Take a look and see if anything else is missing...

Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something

Juno Where I Saw Cut Chemist Last Night?

For anyone who hasn't seen Juno yet, don't bother. I watched it for the first and only time last night. I'm about to show you the single most interesting frame of this otherwise obnoxiously over-written movie.

During a scene in a high school chemistry class, there's a brief view of a teacher entering the classroom. I thought I recognized him, but paused and backed up a few frames to confirm... and that's when I saw this subliminal logo placement.


That's Cut Chemist (real name Lucas MacFadden), flanked on either side by his own logo. Cute attempt at "subliminal" for an otherwise unsubtle movie. It's been brought to my attention that not even Wikipedia is hip to this logo-laden cameo - though MacFadden is credited as "Cut Chemist" in the movie credits. For those not familiar with it, here's a shot of the logo as seen on CutChemist.com:

Previously on PYLB:
Cut Chemist's 360-degree Big Break

Stop Making Money Off My Vote Already

There's a lot of chatter this morning about the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Now, we're used to corruption in this state's politics. Rod can't help but have dollar signs in his eyes - that's how Illinois politics works. (Either you're corrupt and unethical like Rod and Ryan, or you're a completely moronic bigot like James Meeks or Monique Davis.) But Rod's arrest this morning reveals that there's yet another asshole desperate to make a quick buck off the way America voted last month.

What bothers me is the fact that no one seems offended by any of the innumerable other attempts to make money off Barack Obama's president-elect status. Every chump out there is already serving not only to cheapen Obama's presidency before he takes office, but to prolong America's reputation as a nation of blithering idiots. (If we made sense and acted responsibly, I suppose we couldn't call ourselves Americans, could we?) Too many of our fellow Americans are wasting their precious dollars on useless novelty items that commemorate a presidency that has yet to happen. Obama plates, Obama t-shirts and buttons, Obama lipgloss, wine, mousepad, pocket-knife keychains, teddy bears, action figures and bobble heads -- all this and HE HASN'T DONE ANYTHING YET! This is worse than gloating, people. It's stupid and pathetic.

The people behind this crass commercialization, and the idiots buying their wares, make me (still) embarrassed to be American and (particularly) sick to be a resident of Illinois. They should all be locked up with Blago. And then I should really think about moving elsewhere.

Three Words To Retire

I imagine this will be a recurring post theme for me (though I'm sure there are other folks out there making similar efforts). Let's start with three words that need to be retired from the English language: diva, luxury and maverick.

Diva
A diva is an operatic prima donna. A diva is not the latest tramp to butcher R&B, soul or hip-hop conventions. Much of the blame for this forced retirement falls on VH1. Don't ever refer to a musician as a diva when she has just one or two releases to her name. In fact, don't refer to anyone as a diva -- odds are she's probably just an ordinary bitch.

Luxury
Luxury is a word, like diva, that carries very little of its original meaning in the ways it is most commonly used now. Chocolate is not a luxury; you can get it at any corner store or vending machine. Two small bedrooms and one bath do not add up to a luxury condominium, especially when there's no parking space included (let alone a chauffeur). To never again encounter any such abuse of the word "luxury" would, ironically, be very luxurious for me.

Maverick
I don't need to remind anyone of who's butchering this one, but it's clear the culprits are not the best-read people in the news today. A maverick is a lone, independent dissenter -- NOT the candidate nominated by the incumbent party, nor his Alaskan twit sidekick (who is, coincidentally, more likely to shoot a true maverick from a helicopter than ever embody the term herself).

Got a word on the verge of retirement? Let's send it away early! Leave your suggestions in the comments and we'll go from there.

It Takes A Nation Of Monkeys...

Last night, Analog Monkey Video tipped me off to some freshly released work of theirs. Particularly this three-part piece (1, 2, 3) on Public Enemy while in town for an appearance at the Chicago Cultural Center and another at Pitchfork Music Festival last month. E and I took photos of the Cultural Center event, but I haven't posted pics yet. Mine don't compete with the videos, frankly. Seeing PE talk about how they made their music -- music I have listened to regularly since it first came out -- was inspiring. After E shared with me his extra ticket to the group's performance at Pitchfork Fest, I went home and stayed up for hours tweaking my own music, inspired to see "live" the music that taught me about sampling some twenty years ago.

And cheers for Analog Monkey Video. They've been at this a while and it looks like it's starting to pay off. As E points out, you can spot the crew in the mirror in the third installment of the also-recently-released Daytripping with Brandon Cox series (also on P4K.tv).

[I like Pitchfork so much better when they're not over-writing music reviews.]

"Fascinating."

When I was earning my journalism degree, CBS was considered the grandparents' network. Well into my professional career, CBS was still seen as struggling to shake off that reputation... their first sign of success was a little reality show called Survivor. Eight years later, CBS may be poised to become more relevant, to more people, than its Viacom sister network MTV.

This post started as a video I wanted to share (below), a video attributed to CBS. Apparently there's a division of CBS called EyeLab. The group's purpose is nebulous, according to their "about" blurb. In fact, there's nothing about what I'm about to share with you here, though there has been a smattering of press coverage for the past year or so. Regardless of the vague self-description, a few of their promotional videos are becoming successful in the much coveted "viral" way.

It all started with this drawn-out "supercut" of Caruso's cornball one-liners that open every episode of CSI Miami. It wasn't created by CBS, but it wasn't removed for copyright infringement, either. In fact, the creator is cited by CBS as the inspiration for EyeLab.

Fast-forward about a year and there's this one, an "official" EyeLab production, which promotes the DVD set of the remastered original Star Trek television series: DJ Spock. That's because CBS Home Entertainment is using its big sister television network to help move more units. We have CBS Digital to thank for the enhanced digital effects in the remastered series, too.

It'll be interesting to see if a group within a big conglomerate like CBS will be able to sustain the scrappy and nimble approach of folks like stewmurray47. I doubt stewmurray47 had a bottom line to worry about, committees to deal with, advertisers to keep happy, or investors and stockholders to appease. That said, it's kinda cool that CBS started a division that gets to jam the company culture... but I'm sure the fun little videos are just a small part of their job.

It'll also be interesting to see if this mash-up approach to promotion carries into CBS's forthcoming record label, which we should hear from early next year.

Find Some Time

This Last month's posts were almost entirely about music. Time to switch it up a bit, and what better way to do that than with a few of my favorite sites for daily "finds". Today we'll cover four sites, each focused on a different realm of "found" content. You'll want to have a few minutes to get the full effect of each.

Sorry I Missed Your Party
This blog trolls Flickr for photos tagged "party" and posts some of the more provocative ones. Occasionally there's video, but it's usually a Flickr photo - which often links to an entire set of party photos that probably shouldn't have been made public. I recommend checking this site daily, as it never disappoints.

Photoshop Disasters
There are a few sites like this out there, but this one posts the most frequently and, usually, has just the right balance of snarky and savvy. If this site proves anything, it's that having a copy of PhotoShop does not make you an art director, or even teach you anything about composition. You'll learn to spot the marks of an amateur yourself after just a few pages of this site.

The Fail Blog
Evidence of failure is what this blog is all about. The nature of the "fail" varies, and sometimes it's a little hit or miss. But, in the same spirit of Photoshop Disasters and Sorry I Missed Your Party, this blog rarely fails to entertain with frequent updates that help you laugh at others' misfortune (usually the result of their own ineptitude).

FFFFOUND!
Considerably less hilarity than the previous links, but more about inspiring graphic design and photography which the sites' contributors find around the Internet (a lot from the Behance network, as it turns out). It's a bit like a visual tappas menu, with a slew of new tastes for your eyes to sample each day. Maybe that was a bad analogy, but take a gander anyway.

Of course, these and many others are always here for your perusal. Just check the link roll to the right for new additions each time you visit.

Google & Radiohead Build House Of Cards

Here's a nice companion to my last post: Radiohead's new video for "House Of Cards". No cameras were used in the making of it. Google Code has a page dedicated to it, where you can download said code and mess with it yourself, and check out the making-of footage. That's pretty cool, and very "open-source" of them.

Here's the video.



Here's the making-of.



It's worth noting that this is not just a Radiohead promotion. This is a significant marketing move for Google, tying a major international rock band to a variety Google properties like YouTube, iGoogle, Gadget Ads and Google Code in one succinct effort. Smart stuff, even if the song's lyrics seem to contradict the actions of the Google empire.

No News Is The Best News

If only CNN and the other 24-7 news networks would do this instead of repeating the same sixty minutes of programming, twenty-four times a day. I'd watch the news more often, which would get their advertisers more exposure to my much-coveted "young adult" demographic. Just a thought.

Orchestral Meltdown

I never find out about these things with enough time to coordinate a trip to see them. But this sounds cool. Massive Attack and the 45-piece Heritage Orchestra are recreating Vangelis' original soundtrack for a rare one-off screening of Blade Runner: The Final Cut.

Incidentally, a slimmed down 35-piece Heritage Orchestra is playing a show of Amon Tobin covers on May 3. Tobin protege Bonobo DJs as part of the 180-minute event, too. Judging from the preview tracks on the orchestra's site, it's going to kick major orchestral ass.

If any of you attend either of these events, kindly return here to share the details.

June the first feels so far away.

Lately I've been rounding out my collection of my favorite J. G. Thirlwell side-projects, namely Manorexia and Steroid Maximus (thanks in part to foetus.org's digital shoppe). Listening to Steroid Maximus often turns my thoughts toward a certain cartoon I'm sure some of you know... Particularly when I hear Fighteous on Quilombo -- a track that was re-worked into the Venture Brothers opening theme. Knowing that Thirlwell is hard at work on next season's soundtrack only intensifies my craving for new Venture Brothers episodes.

Throwing gas on the fire, I read the LiveJournal lamentations of show creator Jackson Publick. Apparently, Cartoon Network aired very rough cuts of a new episode on April Fool's Day. To his dismay. Publick also reports that Kid Robot has created action figures of Dr. Girlfriend and The Monarch, to be sold in blind boxes with a variety of other Adult Swim characters. There was one other nugget of news...

Venture Brothers Season 3 June 1

With or without Stephen Colbert. In high-definition. Action figures drop April 17.
Go. Team. Venture.

Hello Muxtape, Goodbye Muxtape?

For the past couple weeks, all kinds of folks have been hyping the Muxtape. I say live it up now, because it isn't likely to last. Why? The basic-yet-totally-vague requirement that your MP3 uploads must meet for Muxtape: "Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use."

So, the first thing I think is, how do I know if I have permission to let Muxtape use a song? Apparently there's no way to know for sure. Muxtape doesn't explain itself, which could spell trouble with a capital R-I-A-A.

What was Muxtape thinking, exactly? The blog implies that it's a way for bands to post their original songs, but if you're a band you need to do more than just post your songs (you use sites like MySpace to collect fans' info, too). The majority of Muxtapes posted are begging for legal action. In fact, a cursory look at just a few random posts reveals rampant unauthorized duplication. (The only "safe" mix I can find is this genius offering from Catbirdseat.)

I'm going to get this out of the way now: Nice sorta knowin' ya, Muxtape. Find a good lawyer and make room for all the C & D's you're about to get.*

* Unless you're some elaborate means of entrapment, rigged by the RIAA, in which case I salute your sinister scheme and simultaneously shiver at the settlements you'll wring from the stupid saps who keep uploading illegally.

Ego, Not Infotechnology, Is Source Of Overload

This morning my inbox at work had an email from AdAge, with a link to an article by Steve Rubel called Too Much Infotechnology Can Lead To Overload. I wanted to see what Rubel had to say about it, because my opinion of this phenomenon goes against what most people in my industry seem to think. Like most of the articles about the imaginary "infotech overload" afflicting folks in their forties and fifties, is a fluff piece at best. Rubel's got it all wrong when he blames technology for the overload:

Over the last decade, Americans have become hopelessly addicted to information and busyness. We have all overheard people bragging about their back-to-back schedules and massive e-mail inboxes. We crave information and busyness because it makes us feel wanted, needed and, above all, important. However, too much of a good thing is never ideal.

So, being needy is a good thing?

I used to work with a guy whose blackberry was a constant source of self-esteem. He swore he was busy busy busy, but he never did much but fuss with that device. Take the blackberry away and he's still an asshole looking for anything to do but work (part of the reason he's no longer a co-worker). Rubel would blame the blackberry and email. The root of the problem lies elsewhere.

I bring this up whenever I read anything that claims "today's target audience leads a hurried and harried lifestyle". I have to call "bullshit" on it. We're actually less busy than we used to be, despite our best efforts to prove otherwise. We have DVRs and voicemail, Roomba's and automated bill-pay options. We can time-shift a lot of things for which we used to make appointments -- but most of us are still terrible at time management. That's why the GTD folks are making so much bank right now.

But technology is not the problem. The people who insist every little alert is an excuse to drop everything are. It's called an instant message, but you are not obligated to address it this instant. When your phone rings, it only indicates that someone is trying to call you - not that you need to stop the world to take a call. If this kind of busyness makes you feel important, consider a career as a secretary or administrative assistant. But don't blame the technology for your own inability to cope and adapt.

And maybe try not to waste article inches on this stuff, especially considering the subject matter. Rubel's entire premise is that infotechnology leads to overload -- but all of his evidence supports the notion that human ego, however enabled by information technology, is truly the source of the problem.

Would Rubel's article have the same effect if he were complaining that his iPod holds too many songs to listen to in one sitting, or that his DirecTV has too many channels? When you boil down the article, it's a bit of whining about feeling overwhelmed by all these emails one might otherwise use to validate one's own sense of self-importance. If having options is a symbol of status, the truly hip will be the ones who exercise the option to opt-out at least as often as they opt-in. But that's an idea considerably less ingratiating to the bulk of Rubel's marketing industry audience.

There is no information overload, but, as has been true throughout human history, there are a few too many egos getting in the way of common sense.

Anti-Social Bookmarking (what del.icio.us is now)

If you've read PYLB for a while, you've probably noticed that I've been experimenting with del.icio.us (which, like Flickr, is owned by Yahoo!) to display my links on the sidebar of this page. It seemed like the one social bookmarking tool that served my purposes. But in the past week, it's been on the fritz. As I type, the linkroll script supplied by del.icio.us is displaying my tagroll. That's a significant error, and it's making me think del.icio.us was a bad choice. (Then again, we have no reason to expect stability from anything Yahoo! does these days.)

So, are any of you using social bookmarking services? Which ones? How do you like them? I'd love to know, because it's a pain to keep converting all of one's bookmarks from one service to another. I just want one that works, simply, and easily plugs into my site and my blog. If I need to ditch del.icio.us and head elsewhere, where should I turn?

Pretending To Ask Is Not Asking

Reading Kottke this morning got me to this article by ABC columnist John Allen Paulos. As an irreligious citizen myself, I think it's great to see some attention given (finally) to the most under-represented minority group in this country: atheists.

ABC deserves congratulations for courting the godless reader, but there's one giant, glaring thing wrong with this article. The questions posed to candidates are fictional. The article only imagines asking these questions instead of actually asking them. If only there were a news outlet with correspondents covering the presidential race, correspondents who could ask these questions of the candidates... a news outlet like ABC perhaps?

(Their) god only knows why they haven't thought to stop pretending and start asking. Well, their god and their Mickey.

I Hate Advertising.

I used to cite this as the reason I started working in advertising over eight years ago. The day after Super Bowl XLII, however, I feel as though I am now capable of a much deeper, consuming, educated and validated hate.

Now, most of my readers know that I'm not a sports fan. The Super Bowl has never appealed to me. I simply don't care who wins what game, and never have. I've got more productive things to do. Suck it, sports.

Equally unappealing to me is the predictable practice of mindless pandering in advertising aired during sporting events. Mindless, meaningless messaging that borders on offensive. Some that goes past offensive to just plain obscene - and not in the pornographic way that can turn a guy on. I'm talking about the kind of obscene that turns your stomach because it reveals the hideous truth: brands and their advertisers believe us all to be complete imbeciles. Yes, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's essentially true.

Consumerist called last night's orgy of advertising "a tame batch of disappointment". Personally, I think it's disappointing that we still look to television spots aired during one football game as the shining moment in every year of advertising. We dutifully tune-in to watch the same formula at work year after year, spot after spot: derivative creative product aimed at appealing to the lowest common denominator.

I realize I may be echoing what Bob Garfield has to say about my chosen profession, and about the questionable merit of its contributions to society. Now, the day after the Super Bowl when I've had the chance to see the popular commercials online, I have to agree with Bob whole-heartedly. Check the reports aggregated via BuzzFeed to confirm that the over-inflated spectacle of Super Bowl advertising was, in fact, quite underwhelming.

There's an old saying in advertising: "I know half of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which half." It's probably the half you spent on that inane Super Bowl spot, Mr. Advertiser.

Removed from the over-amplified, over-hyped context of the big game broadcast, the spots I watched online failed to surprise or delight. They sure as hell aren't selling me anything, either. In fact, they're informing me which marketers are deserving of my complete desertion. If I see an ad for a product I use, and that ad paints said product's users as the too-often heralded lowest common denominator, I'm going to stop buying/using/letting people see me with that product. That's not because I work in advertising; that's because I refuse to reward insults with patronage.

But I'm a minority. That's why I shouldn't watch the Super Bowl. It only reminds me why I hate advertising.

Album Art = More Than Mere Packaging

More people buy music digitally now than ever before. The demise of DRM-crippled product makes digital purchases all the more appealing. But some folks - the kind who make money designing static album art, coincidentally enough - complain about "loss of the importance of album artwork." But, contrary to the lamentations of these naive suburbanites, nothing is lost. I think they're simply missing the bigger picture.

Album sleeves were originally intended to protect the analog disc, and preserve the quality of the music encoded on that disc. Every release was packaged essentially as a white label until Alex Steinweiss came along. He's the guy we have to thank for album art as we know it today:

In 1939, 23 year old Alexander Steinweiss proposed to Columbia to make a change in the presentation and packaging of the 78 RPM record albums and to use original artwork (drawings and paintings) on the covers. The new look skyrocketed the sales of an already very popular composition. From that day on the artistic packaging became an important part of the record.

But it's been a long time since album art was limited to the sleeve around a disc. In fact, album art is so important that it transcends packaging. It evolved to include merchandise, concert stage sets, web sites and interactive experiences -- all of which allow an artist to elaborate on the concept(s) of an album. Consider these examples: Pink Floyd Amon Tobin, Air, Kraftwerk, or even the White Stripes. The visual art of an album can be, and for many artists already is, so much more than packaging. I would argue that it's more important than ever.