How do you not want to read this nyt article on the future of Porn film plots? Choice quote:
“The feature is not as big a part of the industry today,” Mr. Orenstein said. But he says he still plans two to three bigger-budget releases each year, including the recently shot “2040,” which is about the pornography business of the future. Mr. Orenstein described the movie as “an almost Romeo-and-Juliet story between an aging porn star and a cyborg.”
I'm not even sure what the fuck "an almost Romeo-and-Juliet story" means. Does anyone?
Also, to balance out the recent Matt Taibbi rants against Wall St, we have some good Michael Lewis in VF doing an article on the insides of AIGFP. I love the fact the he seems to be one of the few Wall St reporters who seems to identify with and yet distance himself from the traders.
Some of you may know that Sam Chan postponed his trip to Australia recently because his mom feared swine flu. Ironically, I now have the flu. (Not the swine kind, but still.)
I might be centre-right on economic issues, but here's a class act by Greg Mankiw in response to some unkind words by Paul Krugman. Then again, maybe I'm siding with George Will and Greg Mankiw because I'm actual fans of their writing. Who knows?
Also, here is Malcolm Gladwell telling people like me (i.e. Chris Anderson) to stfu and be realistic on the nature of free technology. I had some consolation reading this on the internet revolution and the blogosphere.
So, I was reading some stuff this morning and sutmbled upon this interesting article on beauty.
Made me think of a site like T Shirt Hell. (especially the Calvin and Hobbes shirt there) Perhaps post-modern art does have an obsession with desecration, but I'm not sure that beauty as a virtue can be recaptured. We seem to have been conditioned into distrusting the beautiful. The beautiful prom queen is now supposed to be hiding her inner bitch. The austere priest is now supposed to be fiddling boys in his spare time. The beautiful landscape is now supposed to remind us of what we stand to lose if pollution doesn't get controlled soon. The middle-class guilt and anxiety that is all the rage right now reminds us that everything beautiful is apparently under threat by our unsustainable, anti-worker, ignorant, carbon-emitting lives. Is it no wonder that the only art we can connect to is the transgressive?
Someone might point out that this of course has resulted in the dramatic rise of satire and parody as newly dominant forms of expression. (If you don't believe me, try searching youtube for something popular + parody and see how many amateur parodies there are.) In a way parody not only desecrates other art forms but on a subtler level rails against art itself. So many parodies, rather than actually caricaturing art forms actually seem to attack the suspension of disbelief on which they rely. In a way we have started to aggressively mock not just our values but our realities as being woefully inadequate.
Perhaps we see beauty as kitsch only because it now seems that perception of it is more a product of ignorance than knowledge. Perhaps the modern incapacity to forget or to push aside has led us to forget what beauty is like. Whether or not this state of affairs makes us worse of is something else entirely. Perhaps it is merely the best economising we can do given our current awareness. Or maybe it just means we're bitter and jaded.
Here's a great article from New York Magazine on how there's a distinct generational gap that's formed within the American gay community.
Oddly enough, that almost resembles how my brother and I feel about the Indian protesters in Melbourne. Except it isn't a divide based on age, it's a divide based on degrees of cultural assimilation. Huh.
Also, I bought Cool Is Just a Number by I Fight Dragons. I mean how do you not buy an album that has a cover that looks like this:
Hmm. Tables in blogger seem to be rather shittily implemented. So here goes.
Remember how I complained a few posts ago about being unable to download Elizabeth and the Catapult - Taller Children? Well, problem solved.
I went on ebay, bought a $25 iTunes (U.S.) Gift card and got the code emailed to me so there's no shipping charge. I'm now comfortably listening to Taller Children on my Mac. Sweet. How much money did I save? See this table I made here. (Prices are based on Taller Children. Not sure how typical the pricing is though.)
Lovely. It's amusing to note that there are a couple of sellers on ebay selling $25 iTunes (U.S.) gift cards for $28.48 USD. It's essentially currency speculation by another name. I wonder how long it'll take before iTunes either adjusts its prices or the currency markets adjust (correct) to their original position.
Now that I have a couple more dollars to be spend, I'll probably get Cool Is Just A Number by I Fight Dragons. If you're wondering what their sound is like they describe themselves as "Chicago's finest (and quite possibly only) NES-Rock band."
And maybe some Ricky Gervais nonsense. Hmm.
P.S. As a nerdy side note, if Obama's stimulus money and quantitative easing isn't managed properly on the economic upswing we could see a massive devaluation of the dollar. And if iTunes stays rigid in its pricing (as it's known to do) that might make the business of iTunes gift card reselling more and more lucrative.
I've just realised that I spend some amount of my time hanging out with people who would've been GEPs if they'd been brought up in Singapore. Is this social auto-seeking feature something I can turn off? Who knows?
Also, this is awesome. I mean do you like retro games? Of course you do. Do you like musicals? Who the fuck doesn't like musicals?
