My Summer Media Diet

I haven’t writ­ten one of these in a while, but now that sum­mer has near­ly wrapped up, it felt like as good a time as any to cov­er the music, TV, movies, games and books that have cap­tured my atten­tion when I’m not ful­ly immersed in Tik­Tok or my job search.

Read­ing

  • We Want Every­thing, by Nan­ni Balestri­ni — The eas­i­est way to mar­ket a book to me is to have even the most ten­u­ous con­nec­tion to Rachel Kush­n­er. She men­tioned this book in her essay col­lec­tion The Hard Crowd and I’m not sur­prised that I found it an engross­ing account of how indus­tri­al­iza­tion affect­ed Italy in the ’60s. As we as a soci­ety come to grips with the impact AI may have on our lives and our liveli­hoods, this was a brac­ing read about work­ers try­ing to main­tain some con­trol over how they work and how that trans­lates to their abil­i­ty to live.
  • Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biog­ra­phy in Sev­en Songs, by Greil Mar­cus — Some­times I real­ly miss the late glo­ry days of music crit­i­cism as seen in alt week­lies. That kind of writ­ing seems even more gnom­ic now than it did then. The ref­er­ences are often even more obscure now, but in the hands of a mas­ter of the form, all the more won­der­ful. I don’t know if I’ve real­ly got­ten to know Dylan bet­ter as I work through this book, but the kalei­do­scop­ic por­tray­al match­es the sev­er­al Dylans he’s been through­out his long career. Did­n’t hurt that Rachel Kush­n­er had a blurb on the inner jacket.
  • Board­walk of Dreams, by Bryant Simon — This is so good I wrote the author an email. I’ve longed for a great piece of urban polit­i­cal econ­o­my about the arc of Atlantic City, and this is it. Bet­ter still, Simon does a fan­tas­tic job of out­lin­ing how the dynam­ics that shaped Atlantic City are per­ti­nent for any city that’s been trans­formed from an indus­tri­al cen­ter into a tourist play­ground. The com­mon thread of how pub­lic spaces are cre­at­ed and for whom illus­trates not only how the Board­walk scenes can be con­nect­ed to the casi­nos, but by the tran­si­tive prop­er­ty, how vibrant down­towns con­nect to sub­ur­ban malls. If you’ve spent any mean­ing­ful amount of time in Atlantic City as my fam­i­ly has vis­it­ing friends on the sound end of town, this will help you under­stand what real­ly hap­pened there and why. He also just shared a Jason Isbell inter­view con­duct­ed by Cap­i­tal Moves author Jef­fer­son Cowie and I’m just smitten.
  • Red­dit. I’m the last per­son on Earth to get lost here. I final­ly fig­ured out how to make it work for me now that I’m not spend­ing time refresh­ing Twit­ter. I get far more enjoy­ment out of it than I ever did most social media. What if forums were the answer the entire time?

Watch­ing

  • Bar­bie — Felt like we had to see it in the the­ater. Helen wore a pink dress and I wore the “sun­ny side up” Pave­ment t‑shirt. I loved so much about it, but felt like for all the talk about dis­man­tling the patri­archy, we spent a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of time reha­bil­i­tat­ing the men. It was a fun movie, but I think I want­ed more Ghost World than it could offer.
  • The Bear — Is this the only pres­tige TV I like? Maybe! “Fish­es” and “Forks” were stand­out episodes, but the whole show evolved this sea­son into some­thing more than anoth­er fre­net­ic, trou­bling restau­rant dram­e­dy. Also, Oliv­er Platt rules.
  • What We Do in the Shad­ows — I did­n’t love S4, with baby Col­in Robin­son danc­ing around, but the show seri­ous­ly bounced back in S5 and com­plete­ly pulled me back in just when I thought I might let go. “The Cam­paign” is to Col­in Robin­son what “Forks” was for Richie.
  • Cut­ter’s Way – 20 years ago I was a video store clerk respon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the Amer­i­can actors por­tion of the store. I can’t tell you how the VHS box for Cut­ter’s Way taunt­ed me all these years, along­side Hack­man’s Night Moves and Keach’s Fat City. I dust­ed all of them, but nev­er watched them. Now all three are stream­ing on Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel togeth­er and after watch­ing Cut­ter’s Way, it’s time I address this over­sight. If I learned any­thing from my time behind the counter at TLA Video, it was that some movies are, well, just a vibe, and this is no excep­tion. The dis­il­lu­sion­ment, much like in We Want Every­thing, just res­onates so pow­er­ful­ly in the cen­tral con­flict and the char­ac­ters are well-developed.

Lis­ten­ing

  • Yo La Ten­go — This Stu­pid World. There’s lit­er­al­ly noth­ing to say about this band that has­n’t already been said. They’re one of a hand­ful of bands that con­sis­tent­ly pro­duces music that I know I’ll enjoy before I’ve lis­tened and they’ve been doing it for decades. This album is no excep­tion, but you already knew that.
  • Mix­cloud. It’s the best music dis­cov­ery app for me, hands down.
  • This Andy Beta mix that was just shared via his Sub­stack this morning.
  • Indiecast. This is the clos­est I get to music crit­i­cism dra­ma near­ly 13 years since last writ­ing about music for mon­ey. It’s as close as I want to get, I think. Steve and Ian are the Siskel and Ebert of 40-some­thing crit­ics and at a time when so much music crit­i­cism has real­ly focused on fan ser­vice, they offer up indif­fer­ence as a refresh­ing coun­ter­point to all that.
  • Jok­er­men & Nev­er End­ing Sto­ries. More Hyden! I’ve loved Jok­er­men, but NES may be my new favorite. The inter­play between the guys is just fan­tas­tic and height­ens my appre­ci­a­tion for Bob and all the sil­ly things he’s done through­out the years.
  • WRTI. What a gem this radio sta­tion is. It was there the entire time. I should’ve been lis­ten­ing since before I got to col­lege, but glad I start­ed now.
  • WFMU. I’ve long aspired to sup­port the sta­tion and I’m glad I final­ly did. Jesse Jarnow’s The Frow Show was a gate­way to so much great music and the broad­er net­work does not dis­ap­point in that regard either.

Play­ing

  • Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la. I think I’ve spent the last two years play­ing Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la. It’s equal parts embar­rass­ing and enthralling. I have lit­er­al­ly no friends play­ing this game, but I fell in love with all the Viking back­sto­ry thanks to liv­ing in Scan­di­navia 30 years ago. The sto­ry was real­ly sat­is­fy­ing, so much so that I actu­al­ly com­plet­ed the game and can’t stop wan­der­ing around the coun­try­side. I can’t wait for Mirage to hit.
  • Starfield. I haven’t start­ed play­ing yet, but I’m hop­ing this game cures me of my Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la habit!

How to Defeat the Infinite Scroll

We all stare into the infi­nite scroll. Sure, it was once a ques­tion­able UI solu­tion that cre­at­ed an even more dubi­ous UX for sur­fac­ing con­tent on web­sites — don’t like what’s on the menu, well, what if that menu were end­less — now defines how we con­sume con­tent online, inter­rupt­ed only occa­sion­al­ly as the time­line lags. It’s an exhaust­ing, indis­crim­i­nate way to inter­act with media, but what’s the alter­na­tive? We lit­er­al­ly look at mobile devices hun­dreds if not thou­sands of times a day and the social web waits to scratch an itch our brains have to be con­stant­ly entertained.

Ever since the elec­tion, I’ve striv­en — unsuc­cess­ful­ly- to change my media diet. As some­one who con­sumes a ton of con­tent that streams through my var­i­ous time­lines for pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons, I’m try­ing to be more mind­ful of and inten­tion­al about my media con­sump­tion and the habits that enable it.

I’ve long admired Jason Kot­tke’s work and late­ly I’ve appre­ci­at­ed how he’s doc­u­ment­ed his media diet in much the same way one might keep a food jour­nal. Here’s a recent exam­ple.

To that end, I’ve com­piled a list of things I’m engag­ing on purpose!

Listening

  • Yo La Ten­go — There’s a Riot Going On. Seri­ous­ly just what the doc­tor ordered to start an unsea­son­ably cold spring. I did­n’t think they’d match the bril­liance of Fade, but this is a great coda on a won­der­ful career.
  • Stephen Malk­mus and the Jicks — Sparkle Hard. Ever since I heard the first sin­gle, “Mid­dle Amer­i­ca,” which sounds like it would fit com­fort­ably on Ter­ror Twi­light, yet still sounds fresh.
  • The Breed­ers — All Nerve. Ugh I know this has been very “Remem­ber the 90s” but the new Breed­ers has so much atti­tude! “Ner­vous Mary” is one of my favorite songs of the year.
  • Kamasi Wash­ing­ton — Heav­en and Earth. A per­fect­ly defi­ant record. It’s how I start Sun­day morn­ing in 2018.

Reading

  • Abbott. Sal­adin Ahmed’s phan­tas­magoric thriller set in the ’70s about a Detroit reporter inves­ti­gat­ing mur­ders in Cass Cor­ri­dor is reminscent of Lau­ren Bewkes’ fan­tas­tic nov­el, Bro­ken Mon­sters, but less nou­veau Detroit.
  • Red­dit. I remem­ber when Red­dit was cas­ti­gat­ed as being the inter­net’s cesspool, but now the notion of self-mod­er­at­ed com­mu­ni­ties that you can vis­it inten­tion­al­ly feels pret­ty great.

Watching

  • Every­thing trail and ultra run­ning, start­ing with The Barkley Marathons: The Race that Eats Its Young. The Barkley Marathons aren’t an insane race, they’re an exis­ten­tial cri­sis. A friend of mine from high school went this year to observe the race and he wit­nessed its bru­tal majesty first­hand. There were no fin­ish­ers this year. Check out The Year Barkley Won in Trail Run­ner Mag­a­zine, too.
  • Baby­lon BerlinJason wrote a bit about the music here, but I was pos­i­tive­ly spell­bound over 16 45-minute long episodes. “Zu Asche, Zu Staub” is a show­stop­per. Baby­lon Berlin is thrilling and punc­tu­at­ed by fan­tas­tic song and dance numbers.
  • The 2018 Philadel­phia Phillies. I’ve been bull­ish on the Phillies’ rebuild, but had not expect­ed them to lead the NL East in the first half. I also did­n’t expect the Braves to be at the door so quick­ly either.

I’ll try to update this on a quar­ter­ly basis. How do you man­age your cul­tur­al con­sump­tion habits?

Overlooked Culture

Maybe I’m fol­low­ing the wrong peo­ple on social media, but has the word “over­looked” lost all mean­ing as it per­tains to cul­ture? It seems to me that when we’re still print­ing spoil­er alerts for ten-year-old TV shows that “over­looked” has lost all explana­to­ry pow­er. Now when I see that word in a review, I roll my eyes. Chances are the reviews are just as over­looked as the cul­ture they describe, if not moreso.

Sure, with­in your niche the new records from Vam­pire Week­end or the Nation­al may be on every­one’s lips, but it’s a safe bet that the word of mouth out­paces actu­al con­sump­tion of that par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al arti­fact. You may per­ceive that those records have gone main­stream, but the real­i­ty is your neigh­bor has nev­er heard either band.

There’s def­i­nite­ly a bright side to this; with this shift, it appears to me at least that snob­bery los­es in the bar­gain. The on demand nature of cul­ture now enables any­one curi­ous enough to book­mark those things men­tal­ly and nar­rows the gap between the expert and the novice. More­over, we’ve done away with the cul­tur­al mono­liths that once dom­i­nat­ed the pop cul­tur­al land­scape that allow us to gath­er around real and imag­ined water cool­ers for dis­cus­sion and debate.

But how do crit­ics describe this shift as the pace of cul­tur­al cre­ation plows under what came before? Blink and you could miss the next cul­tur­al epicy­cle. Has cul­ture been mar­gin­al­ized or per­son­al­ized? Can any­thing be described as ephemer­al, or were we just always talk­ing to our­selves, the myth of mono­cul­ture just anoth­er imag­ined com­mu­ni­ty peo­pled exclu­sive­ly by elites?

Taking Ripfest to the Next Level

You know what makes this blog great? It’s always remind­ing me of my short­com­ings. No, not that I post once a month; that I post res­o­lu­tions every year and nev­er ful­fill them.

This year I planned on rip­ping all my CDs to my Mac­Book. Did­n’t hap­pen. It’s tedious, there’s nev­er time, the litany of excus­es goes on and on. That changes next year. 

Why? Because if we’re plan­ning on buy­ing a new home in 2013, I need to shrink my por­tion of dig­i­tal goods con­sid­er­ably. There’s no excuse to not have every­thing loaded onto a com­put­er that can be accessed via home shar­ing. Flip­ping con­tent from com­put­er to oth­er devices in the home is real­ly awe­some and I’m final­ly see­ing that potential.

What does it mean? I need an iMac. While every­one is going small­er — whether that’s iPads or Mac­Book Airs — I’m real­iz­ing that I need a machine that can com­fort­ably store all the CDs and DVDs I own local­ly that I can then access on mobile devices. My Mac­Book just won’t cut it. I want some­thing that can whirr qui­et­ly upstairs and be the clas­sic home com­put­er. I think iMac fits the bill.

Wish me luck in 2012 in get­ting our dig­i­tal life togeth­er! (Do peo­ple still even buy used CDs and DVDs?)

Who Needs Birthday Presents?

Once upon a time, I used to be a guy who com­piled lists — obses­sive­ly, even — of the movies and music I want­ed to acquire in some phys­i­cal for­mat. It made birth­days and Christ­mases so easy for every­one in my life. Dis­trib­ute the list and — voila — instant gifts!

Now it’s not so easy. I still real­ly enjoy music and film, but there’s just no press­ing need for me to “own” any of it. Does this mean I’m fac­ing a future of ties for every gift going forward?