Memories from a future that never happened (pt 4): Gigadeath

With the new Star Trek out and eager anticipation of seeing the return of the 'campy, creepy sexy Kirk' (as opposed to the unsexy, militant one in the later series), Vice magazine reports on an interesting theory from AI theoris Hugo De Garis that we'll all soon be waging war on robots. Not quite like Terminator - it'll be newer nano-species that will be waging wars resulting in mass 'Giga-death'.
The thought is interesting and fantastic, but the future is going to be alot more regressive and the needs more primitive. The fact that we can't seem to get around nationalism or religious fundamentalism still in the 21st century means that we're not going to be developing any amazing technologies that will present us with those moral dilemma's. (*As why we're not having flying cars or colonizing mars: Capitol and our own short-sighted needs for validation: Religion. Stem cells are still a sore subject with fundies means no cure for cancer, or the other diseases that take us down before we can even build and mass produce 'fusion' or hyperdrives.)
Hate to kill the magic here - but our destruction is going to be ultimately banal and around the usual crap: Oil, Food, Water, Guns and God.

CRAZY HIPPIE GENDER FREAKOUT

Saw Justin Bond do a small set at Comeback's 5th anniv on Friday. It was an interesting, yet incongruous set. I say incongruent because it was largely acoustic caberet for a post-electroclash set and bordered on freak-folkish. Bond seems to channel some Night-of-A-1000-Stevie Nick's balladeering, which probably would have worked in a different setting. Still - he mentioned something about being involved in the Rad Faeries and immediately I blushed and flashed back to living in Eugene and Ashland in the 90's... Pagans and freaks were the norm, thus nothing really shocks or unnerves me about people and their practices. I dated a Wiccan even, and it seemed to fit in Ashland - we were a small, rural town in a country-like setting - close to the earth and disconnected from big cities. Once i hit Seattle, I ditched the sensibilities and became urbane. I spent time online, in coffee shops and bars. I didn't hike. I didn't camp for the longest time (*I joked that "Blair Witch" was improbable because I would never go camping in the first place)... It seemed a million miles away. Fremont was even like an imitiation of the real thing -- you've not truly met hippies until you've been inside a gigantic hollowed out tree that serves as their quiet space...
Yes, hippie's are truly the last punks because they're the last earnest types that cling to something not commodified and/or shoved into a particular identity. Bond's set was probably too advanced for the CMBK crowd - and gender fluidity is still suspect in the gay community (ask how many gays react to the 'pregnant man' and you start to see the dividing line still w/in the community), and thus, the true rebels are those who continue to defy interpretation.
And yet - I still get impatient around Dead concerts and dreadlock stench is still one of the banes of my existence. Still, I would like to do some kind of 'Return to the Earth' thing when the weather is warmer. I'd like to get a ton of creative types to go into the woods and not necessarily bang on drums, but maybe do some interesting creative shtick. Maybe mate it with fauxpomo sensibilities and a few classical turns, maybe something along this at Fruit Farm that I was so lucky to be a part of last year:

Dead Islands

The grey saturdday is more Dylancholia: Jason Yarmosky's take on Orpheus as Dylan. I have always been fascinated by the Orpheus myth, simply because it's probably the first tale of a rock-n-roll romance with the complete existential ending that only the greeks could think up: it doesn't always work out, no matter how hard you try. I love this series that Yarmosky does - incorporating Warsaw Jewish ghetto's with a smoky, lost quality. The idea that you can't escape history and in the end, you're like smoke. Relatedly - I am also digging this video here from Department of Eagles' music video "No One Does It Like You" as part of the MOMA's ongoing PopRally series:

P.I. deathwatch

Sad, sad Tomorrow is the last issue of the P.I. I can't tell if this is one of those moments when something in America truly dies, or if it just means the end of dominance of a media form. I'm sure this is like theater, or the novel - something that will persist, but probably has to move beyond the cuniform written in stone and in animal blood. Again, I opt for the online presence. Maybe the model of pulp and ink is like theater - meant for a small, select few willing to pay top price for admission/copies. Sigh. Oh well, in brighter news, I guess it's a good thing i never pursued j-school.

All You Protest Kids...

So - the video of Jamie and I at Saturday's protest march made Towleroad, which is kinda funny b/c I hadn't really intended to have it broadcast on the national blogosphere... And had I known, I certainly would have made an attempt to edit it better. (However, I love that another protest-goer comments: That is the worst footage ever. It makes it seem like a big jumbled mess instead of the well organized and powerful statement that it actually was.. Yeah, uhh - how about a big cup of STFU? There's more to this march than my crappy video obviously, and the fact you probably wanted some sweeping epic makes me wonder which march you attended? But - not to dwell... The march was good, not great. It probably could have used 200 more people to be honest and the video actually makes it look like there were more people than actually were there. Also - while I was happy to be part of this protest, I think the audience (Capitol Hill) is in agreement - Homophobia has no place. It's the hidden bigots and barbarians at the gate (read - people from out of town, other places) that have a problem with gays.

In any case - the video is here for any who are interested.

PS - yes, the jar-lamps are very easy to make and you bang 'em out in under 1/2 hour. Just need medium squarish mason-jars, coat hangers, a good pair a pliers (that can also cut wire)...

I did it for fun! I did it for fun!

Did a refresh to see what Ryan Trecartin was up to of late (*mostly b/c there's no facebook fan page for him), and saw this article. Looks like he's leaked to NYT. Thought it was a good profile - but again, they approach it with high-brow theory, something that is not as organic as his overall work.
I met him at Fruitfarm this past summer, but sitting across from him at dinner - was too bashful to admit I was a huge fan. Besides, the questions i would have asked, NYT did and unsuccessfully. Like all good artists - you really don't know what journey you're own - you just know it while you work on it.
So - all i'm gonna do is hopefully add another google hit to build a much deserved web presence (afterall, that's the landscape where it lives online)... In the meantime - enjoy AFFE in it's entirety on Ubuweb.

Dearth of Print

Another casualty, another dollar (less) - media is going down the tubes, hard and fast. It's hard to imagine because in former recessions, we used to lay around all day and read newspapers and magazines about things we could never afford and profiles of people we could never be. Now, however, with digital goods and services, we've instant news and gratification (TMZ) and less spin and more critical thinking...
Forward thinkers argue that NYT should invest heavily in Kindle-readership, and abandon print for good (*and supply math to justify it). This to me is awesome, but it's also a utopian kind of dream that doesn't take into account the huge infrastructure to pull off. Still - when you look at the whole waste issue, it does seem inevitable that they'll have to go to this model sooner or later.
However - one argument in all of this that isn't surfaced is how much sales space has taken over media in the last 20 years and it's deafening impact on true content. I've seen actual "bias" in the media - and it's not conservative or liberal, it's "revenue". We've sold out actual information space to people who need to sell you cruise-ship packages, sectional-sofa sets and anxiety medication. Some rags are worse than others (the 'free magazines' I manage to get are circling the drain and getting thinner and thinner, ads getting larger and larger). If and when NYT goes this route - they'll have to switch to a pay-per article and probably abandon revenue-based advertising. Just my 02.