Rangelife

Kill this word: "Amafessional"

Part of the fun of being a trend consultant, even a "microtrend" consultant like Mark Penn, is that you get to make up new words to describe cultural emergences. (Like "emergences." I don't even know if that's a real word. I just made it up.)

Making up new words (or "neologisms," which is itself not a neologism) makes it easier to discuss a trend in depth. But more importantly, it allows the trendsultant (see what I did there?) to identify themselves as the discoverer of the trend, even when the trend is really fucking obvious to everybody. Some examples:

People going out less to play with their gadgets is "cocooning." Thank you, Faith Popcorn.

People who create things are "prosumers." Thank you, Alvin Toffler.

You get the idea.

The above mentioned Mark Penn, who was the genius behind Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign strategy, now writes the Microtrends column for the Wall Street Journal. And oh boy, does he have a new doozy of an observation for all of us confused minnows, just rolling with the cultural tides without noticing a thing:

On the Web, Amateurs Rivaling Professionals

This is the age of the amafessional, when amateurs are rivaling professionals in opportunity, talent and the ability to produce quality work. It's happening in virtually every field. In areas ranging from communications to medicine to simply making things with your hands, amafessionals are gaining in numbers and the ability to market their services.

Whoa! He discovered MySpace! (RIP.)

Struggling amateurs used to want to become stars, and of course some still do, but this new phenomenon is different. Millions are participating just for the fun and challenge of it–-almost like running in a marathon. "Amafessionals" include both the amateur/professional hybrid and pajama professionals, who often work at home rather than the studio or the office.

It goes on and on. People without advanced degrees or long resumes are upending the music business, medicine, crafts, and journalism. So how does the "amafessional" differ from, say, the "prosumer"? Well, it's a longer word. And Penn can credit himself for thinking of it.

But if ever a baby deserved to be snuffed out in its bassinet, it's this one.

Ed Hardy brings us together

Spotted at SeaWorld last week:

You have to admire their total commitment to one particular brand of dragons skull-fucking lions on surfboards.

The widespread adoption of and backlash against Ed Hardy-ana has been remarkable in its speed and virulence. Additionally, a whole universe of similarly over-designed t-shirt and accessory labels has invaded America's department and discount stores.

One year ago, you probably never heard of Ed Hardy or its ilk. Now you can use these brands to make any story more effective.

Then: "I was standing in line to get into the club, and three guys cut right in front of me like I wasn't even there."

Now: "I was standing in line to get into the club, and three guys in Ed Hardy gear cut right in front of me like I wasn't even there."

Which story would piss you off more? Here's another.

Then: "I would have been here on time, but I was stuck in 7-11 for 10 minutes because some douchebag got in an argument with the checkout clerk."

Now: "I would have been here on time, but I was stuck in 7-11 for 10 minutes because some douchebag in an Ed Hardy t-shirt got in an argument with the checkout clerk."

So in this sense, Ed Hardy has done something good for mankind. Hate is a potential unifying asset.

All the world needs is for Roman Polanski to be photographed rockin' some underage dragon skullfucking on his chest. Then we can all hate together in unity. Where's that Nobel Peace Prize?

Who the hell are Ginger and Mary Ann?

Japanese TV is awesome. That’s a problem when you’re there, because it can make it hard to get out of your hotel room and into the fascinating, frenzied world outside.

One of the ingenious programs I remember when I last visited (2005) was a game show called "Dead Age.” I speak slightly less Japanese than your average dead Pensacolan, so I had figure out the rules from context.

The gist: Two comic actors introduce each round of the game with a sketch that takes place in an office. Each sketch ends with the co-workers joking over a head shot of an older famous person. After the sketch, the game show contestants must guess the age of the youngest person surveyed who knew who that old celebrity was.

For some reason, this game show came to mind when I saw this poster hanging in the window of Taco Del Mar in San Francisco:

“Fajita + Burrito
It’s like getting
Ginger & Mary Ann”

"Gilligan’s Island" ran 1964-1967, but lived on in syndication well into the 1980s. Pretty much anyone who grew up the USA during that period could sing the theme song if you spotted them "Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…," and they’d certainly get the sexy joke that Taco Del Mar has plastered on its in-store merchandising.

But you’d be hard pressed to find an episode of "Gilligan’s Island" to watch in the last 15 years, even in the wasteland of basic cable. Would someone under 21 know their Mary Ann from their Ginger? Is Taco Del Mar’s joke lost on a younger crowd? (Does Taco Del Mar care?)

Gen X may be the last generation to know the pop culture of previous generations. We enjoyed the last pre-digital childhood, when computers were luxury items and connecting to others by keyboard meant typing a letter on a Selecrtic. Video and audio were discovered and consumed on analog devices at the same time everyone else watched and heard them.

What this meant was that our televisions, especially independent UHF stations and off-prime-time slots, were loaded with old shows. As a kid of the '80s, I not only watched the Neilsen hits, but also ancient favorites like "The Little Rascals" (1930s short films), wartime Bugs Bunny cartoons (1940s), "I Love Lucy" (1951-1957), "Leave It to Beaver" ('57-'63), "The Flintstones" ('60-'66), "Bewitched" ('64-'72), "Laugh-In" ('68-'73), "The Streets of San Francisco" ('72-'77), and anything else a bored kid might like.

(I could add that time filters pop culture in strange ways. Neither "Gilligan’s Island" nor the immortal "Star Trek" were hits in 1966. Among the top 10 shows that season were CBS’s Tuesday night powerhouse block of "The Red Skelton Hour" and something called "Daktari.")

It’s all different now. Today’s college kids grew up digital, and they hardly bother to distinguish between a broadcast and cable TV network. Hundreds of channels mean hundreds of demographically microtargeted programs. Would a 10-year-old today want to see an episode of "Cheers," much less "Gilligan’s Island"?

In other words, the Dead Age for all cultural references may be drifting older and older. Most Gen Xers know many of the cultural icons of the '50s onward. How many Gen Yers knew anything about Farrah Fawcett before the day she died? Will the Millennials know anything from the Reagan years? (Kids, he didn't really win the Cold War.)

This isn't trivia. America has precious few shared cultural conventions. As our country has diversified and three television networks exploded into a billion websites, the “now” dominates, and the “then” is mere curiosity (or nostalgia, if you experienced it the first time). Additionally, the relevance of “now” is approaching Warhol’s 15-minute model. Besides perhaps "American Idol," there’s hardly a pop culture franchise with the broad cachet of yesterday’s hits. The other options just didn’t exist back then.

CBS canceled "Gilligan’s Island" 42 years ago. Only three of its seven principals are even still alive. So if we can try to imagine a “Ginger & Mary Ann” equivalent for 2051… we can’t.

This may not seem like it would mean much for anyone except Taco Del Mar’s copywriters. But as time passes, we'll find it harder to relate to our fellow citizens on a pop culture basis. And really, what other culture do we have anymore?

Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by communists

(Unironic picture titled "obama-gore-scumbags.jpg" sourced from Democrat=Socialist via the delightful ilovecarbondioxide.com)

If you know me, you know that I’m very old and wise. And in my very long life, I’ve learned a great many important things.

Primary among them is that all political ideologies are the same:

• We represent freedom
• They represent totalitarian fascism
• Everything they say they’re concerned about are really smokescreens for their ultimate goals, which are their own corrupt power and taking control over our lives because they get off on that kind of thing

All political movements are, in essence, attempts to reposition society's winners and losers. Our winners are virtuous and make the world richer and freer and fairer, but their winners just want to make themselves richer and more powerful at the expense of the people.

Now that Obama has proposed a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions, a policy which his opponent also championed during the 2008 campaign, the Right has decided to go apeshit about global warming.

For example, CNS News:

I am increasingly of the opinion that the main goal of the Obama administration through CO2 regulation, exploding deficits, punishing taxation, and any other means at their disposal is the destruction of the economy and the complete control of impoverished Americans.

And the Dakota Voice:

Folks, don’t fall for more socialist lies aimed to remove more of the money you earned from your pocket to make even bigger government which aims to rob you of more of your God-given liberties... Isn’t it time you took a look at how thin the “facts” are behind Al Gore’s religion, and join the rest of us in rejecting this anti-American nonsense?

And Doug Ross:

Never mind that almost all greenhouse gas is water vapor. But since the Statists can't measure water vapor and condensation, they attempt to wrestle control of carbon dioxide instead, by claiming it's toxic. But the point is, they want to control you... The economy is on life support, so what does the Enviro-Statist do? He grabs more power. Because they don't care about the economy, they care about power! They're not about preserving or improving our society, they're bent on destroying it.

And Rush says:

There's no truth to anything that's being said about all this, be it global warming or what the stimulus package is going to do. It's a disaster, and it's all designed to get you to agree to pay higher taxes down the road. It's all about surrendering freedom and advanced lifestyles, because those are the things said to be responsible for the destruction of the Earth via the warming climate.

Ditto! And one more for good luck:

The birth of the 'environmental crisis' was concoted by the international communists a long time ago. It's very well documented. What you're seeing now is how tyrants impose more totalitarian government and in the case of these united States of America, the destruction of private property rights with the ultimate goal: destroy capitalism.

Personally, I think the jury is still out on the relationship between carbon emissions and climate change, and it's unlikely we'll ever know the answer for sure. It's hard to look at data without bias; but the more I try, the more fuzzy the link seems.

I'm down with cap and trade, however. Emissions are disastrous for lots of reasons, and the costs of oil imports go way beyond $2 or $4 gas. If we taxed oil just to pay for our foreign policy distortions and international borrowing costs, gasoline would be priced at twice its current level.

But that's socialist talk. And as we all know by now, global warming is a phony phenomenon invented by left-wingers who want to destroy our way of life just to increase their own power. Everyone knows Al Gore just doesn't want to get a real job, after all.

MEOW!

That's sooooo... ex-child-star destined to star on a VH1 reality show.

Wow! Is there anything more persuasive than being talked down to by a celebrity?

I Used to Rule the World

Have you downloaded Firefox 3 yet? It's renders a page so fast, it's like someone applied the Jaws of Life to your bandwidth. Go get Firefox.

Big ups to my man Paul for engineering Download Day.

***

Tiny band with hipster mustaches accuses Coldplay of ripping them off:

I could decry the universal lameness at work here, but as usual the indie snob commenters have the right idea. Speak, commenters:

there are only 7 notes in the major scale (and only so many combinations). this type of thing is bound to happen by accident occasionally! it's not even that close.

--

the song might sound a little alike, but both bands sucks ass anyway.. just so damn crappy that both bands get more attention that they ever should have!!

--

simple thing is this sucks and SOUNDS NOTHING LIKE VIVA LA VIDA BULLSHIT< BULLSHIT BULLSHIT!!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU WHINEY YANKY CUNT< PISSED OFF CUS U R SHIT AND HAVE NO SIGNIFICANCE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY FUCK YOU, THE only bit even slightly similar is the long pronunciation of 'ruuuuule'

--

I could accidentally fart a melody similar to your song...

***

Officer Mahoney flips out

***

The indispensible Adam Riff links to The New Republic's "review" of The Happening, a review headlined: "This film is so bad that I feel compelled to make a spoiler-laden list of its most laughably terrible parts rather than review it."

Since you're probably not going to see M. Night's latest career suicide attempt, go ahead and read the review. And keep all your windows open.

***

New Zealand Cafe Serves Dishwashing Liquid as Mulled Wine

As "weird news," the story is just meh, but as comparative legal study, it's brilliant:

A judge convicted the restaurant of causing emotional harm to the women and ordered they each be paid $752 in reparations. He also ordered Chico's Restaurant to pay victims' costs totaling $766 and court costs of $772.

Under New Zealand's no-fault accident law, victims do not sue for damages. Instead, treatment costs and income loss are met by the nation's Accident Compensation program.

In New Zealand, restaurant makes a bad mistake, so it pays a total of $3,000 in damages and probably loses a lot of business from the publicity. If this happened in the USA, the cafe would be forced into Chapter 11, and its owner sentenced to five years on Monster Island with all the rapists.

Kiwis FTW!

Happy Loving Day

Today is Loving Day, marking the 41st anniversary of the US Supreme Court affirmation of the right of interracial couples to marry.

The holiday isn't as cheesy as it sounds; it's named after the plaintiffs, the white Richard Loving and the black/Indian Mildred Loving of Central Point, Virginia. You remember the slogan of Virginia back in the '60s, right? "Virginia is for Lovers of Similar Genetic Heritage."

The Economist, of all pubs, had a touching obit on Mildred Loving, who passed away just last month at the age of 68.

It was only recently that I looked around and realized that our local friends are predominately in mixed race relationships, and creating little fusion-style offspring of great variety. Whether this was subconscious same-seeking or just a function of living in the Bay Area... well, who cares? It's just one of the greatest benefits of living in our time, and not in the time of the Lovings.

So, happy Loving Day to all people who love.

***

Word to my fellow miscegenist Jon.

Pan-Racial Bling, and Martin Scorcese's Blow for the Supply-Siders

Do black people spend too much of their money on shiny crap?

Bill Cosby thinks so. $200 for sneakers? No problem. $200 for SAT prep? Not this month.

But something about the Coz's reasoning always bugged me. Maybe it was because my high school was almost evenly split among blacks, whites, and Hispanics, and every morning in the student parking lot, you could see each community displaying their immense wealth in their own fabulous ways.

Thorstein Veblen had the thought to coin this phenomenon "conspicuous consumption," 100 years before mainstream hip-hop turned stupid and corrupt.

Thankfully, we have modern research methods to suss out the truth: According to some fancy professors with a lot of books and computers and stuff, blacks and Hispanics do spend a higher percentage of their incomes on glitter:

Blacks and Hispanics spend up to 30% more than whites of comparable income on visible goods like clothing, cars and jewelry, the researchers found... To do that, they spent less on almost all other categories except housing, and they saved less.

Visible items are those others can see when one is in public. The researchers found that blacks and Hispanics do not spend more than whites on items, such as home furnishings, that could serve as status symbols but aren't seen by as many people.

But... wait for it... there's a twist!

While Roussanov and his colleagues acknowledge that cultural preferences may play a role in these spending choices, they tested that theory by subdividing blacks, Hispanics and whites by income level and state of residence. This caused the differences in spending patterns to disappear. What really matters, Roussanov, Charles and Hurst found, is not one's race but one's economic situation relative to the "reference group" -- people in the immediate community.

Poor blacks and poor whites both spend more on visible goods if they live in poor communities, because such spending gives them more status relative to others in the community. But poor blacks and poor whites living among wealthier people do not devote extra portions of income to visible expenditures, since they are too far behind to get more status from the extra spending they can afford...

Blacks and whites appear to have different spending habits only because blacks tend to be concentrated in poor communities more than whites, Roussanov says.

So there you have it. Poor people who live among other poor people spend more on looking not-poor. And it's still nearly impossible for poor communities to get wealthier when it's dedicating so much of its income to useless items of ethereal value. So Cosby's not wrong. He's just grumpy.

***

Now here's a question for the gated community across town. Which movie has contributed the most wealth to America? If you're a supply-sider, you'd have to say Taxi Driver.

Follow this thread: Scorcese makes Taxi Driver, which inspires John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Reagan's personal popularity skyrockets, cowing the Congressional Democratic majority from stopping Reagan's tax cuts. The resulting deficit spending saves the American economy and leads to 25 years of prosperity.

I always wondered what right-wing economists talked about when they were stoned. Except for the supply siders' premise that we're still enjoying the fruits of the Reagan Revolution (we're always on the right side of the Laffer curve, aren't we, you soulless rich assholes?), it's an interesting answer to the question.

Now if we can take the radical action required to prevent utter catastrophe, we could bestow similar credit to An Inconvenient Truth.

***

Finally, if you have Showtime, you have no excuse for failing to watch This American Life. Holy crap, is it good.

Weekend Head Cheese

Three questions that George Stephanopolous forgot to ask at Wednesday night's debate:

• Do you think that Disney should already be writing High School Musical 4, when part 3 is still in production?
• Should the NFL have taken harsher punishment against the New England Patriots for Spygate?
• Does anyone really think I should be moderating this critical debate when I owe the entirety of my career to one of your spouses?

***

I spotted this multimedia collage across the street from the Mint. I call it 1944.

***

Karl Lagerfeld appears in GTA4. And Ricky Gervais, too. I have this game on pre-order, mofos. It may be the last thing I ever buy. Highest possible review score from OXM.

***

Speaking of reviews, the new Pacino thrilla 88 Minutes is scoring a 12/100 on Metacritic. That ranks it lower than Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered.

Christ, what was Pacino's last good movie? The Insider? I keep expecting Pacino and DeNiro to reunite for a movie adaptation of Falcon Crest or some Laser Cats thing.

***

John Edwards was phenomenal on Colbert last night. Jet skis for everyone!

***

"It's the incorrect context, stupid."

OK, let's fix this once and for all. From Reuters this morning:

It's still 'the economy, stupid' in Pennsylvania

In 1992, Bill Clinton used the phrase "it's the economy, stupid" to win the White House amid a recession. Sixteen years later, his wife Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination by promising relief from more hard times.

No no no no no. I'm going to kill myself if I ever read this again.

"It's the economy, stupid" was not a Clinton campaign slogan. The phrase was one of James Carville's tenets for keeping the campaign on message, as seen in the documentary The War Room. Pinned to the wall was:

Change vs. more of the same
It's the economy, stupid
Don't forget healthcare

***

Here's how Carville would write those for the Hillary '08 campaign:

More of the same vs. more of the other same
It's my turn, assholes
Please forget Hillarycare

And for McCain:

Sunnis vs. Al Qaeda (what?)
Five years in captivity, stupid
Don't forget Bush hates me

***

Punks and Rockabillies vs. Emos. With violence. Mexico-style.

***

A picture of a package on the package? That's the Droste Effect, my friend.

***

And praise to you. Have a happy matzo-filled weekend.

My Advice to Criminals: Stay the F*** Away from Weng Weng

Weng Weng Rap

I can't stop watching this. Anybody got any Weng Weng on VHS?