i don't know, man

Photo

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:45:39 -0400

Matt’s submission

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:02:14 -0400

Matt’s submission

I Just Want a Picasso

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:14:00 -0400

At an old job writing for a website that I thoroughly loathed, I would walk down Jay Street, from the F train stop, towards the East River every day when it was too cold to ride my bike. And on that walk I would pass a billboard for the Samsung Galaxy S III where, apparently, if you had a Samsung Galaxy S III, you could just touch your phone to the advertisement and get a free, exclusive Goodie Mob song. Maybe it was my job, maybe the weather, but it made me so sad. It seemed to be everything that was disappointing about technology — its ability to take something you hold dear, make it more available to you than ever before imaginable, and then reveal what horseshit it is in the process.

Today I watched a commercial where Jay-Z, pretending to work out bars for an upcoming album that will be released on Samsung Galaxy S III phones, comes up with this: “All I want is a Picasso/En mi casa/in my castle/I’m a haza.”

Jay starts with fine art — something he’s been making boasts about lately — and finishes with a Scarface reference. But then the commercial takes a weird turn. Jay-Z pretends to make the bizarre claim that hip-hop is all about “lush sounds” and “live instrumentation,” then he and Rick Rubin, so world-weary he can’t sit up, start to pretend to dissect the bars. Jay-Z asks himself a series of rhetorical questions.

JAY: I just want a Picasso. You don’t want a job? You don’t want happiness? You don’t want this? You don’t want that?

RUBIN: [IN REPOSE] And you’ve found in life experience that you’ve gotten enough of those things to realize that it doesn’t change your life at all.

Quite the reveal! Jay-Z’s crass materialism (q.v. “Dead Presidents,” “Money, Cash, Hoes,” “Money Ain’t a Thang,” the entirety of his public persona, etc.) was an act all along. Or, if it was real at one point, on his album that is to be released exclusively on Samsung’s Galaxy S III, it will become put-on, an act that critiques consumer culture — specifically in the market for priceless fine art.

It reminded me of the chatter I saw on Twitter, that Kanye West’s newest album — maybe you’ve heard of it — Yeezus, should be considered a, pardon the expression, Rap Game American Psycho. Kanye even promoted the album with a clip inspired by the movie version. In it, Scott Disick, who is famous for being on a reality TV show about terrifyingly un-self-aware heiresses, one of whom just had Kanye’s first child, plays the Bateman character. He launches into a glowing review of Yeezus before killing Jared Leto (or whatever), just as Bale’s Bateman did after discussing Huey Lewis and the News’s Sports.

What people who have seen the movie American Psycho but have not read the book don’t often know is that the album reviews are standalone chapters. Bateman is odd, but not so odd he would deliver an album review to a guest at his home. (Other characters in the book are odd in this way: a friend who he takes out to dinner talks about his vacation in 100% travel brochure copy.) But the reviews give a window into Bateman’s empty world, where Huey Lewis and the News and Madonna make truly meaningful — indeed, beautiful — music, rather than empty, disposable pop music. The adaptation is smart, but it plays up Bateman’s craziness, which I think misses the point.

However absurd Bateman’s world was, I can’t imagine ours is very different, at least with regard to our willingness to intellectualize pop music that exists for one reason only: to enrich the musician and the corporations that put out the music. Or maybe phone companies. And now the two guys who made Watch The Throneare trying to convince us that they dislike consumerism, right on top of one another. Please, don’t let them convince you.

Of course

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:58:01 -0400

Of course

chrismohney: chrismenning: In case you ever wondered where to...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 11:59:52 -0400

chrismohney:

chrismenning:

In case you ever wondered where to get a bag of Dick’s.

Popular late night drunken dining when I lived in Spokane, and yet no matter how fogged my brain at those times I was still aware on some level this was among the worst food I had ever eaten, good times

“Dick’s is the place where the cool hang out” -Sir Mix-a-Lot, 1988

(Including: Maharaji, Kid Sensation, and Larry, the White Guy)

Bay to Breakers participants in 1987, in the old Justin Hermann...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:54:00 -0400

Bay to Breakers participants in 1987, in the old Justin Hermann Plaza, before one dirtbag skateboarder even laid one bit of wax on the ledges. And look at the Embarcadero freeway in the background! Thank god for ‘89, I guess.

Swiped from Internet K-Hole

Photo

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:20:51 -0400

Photo

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:04:48 -0400

whyidontskateboard: Yeah, I’m a Haight cruster. I got a...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:41:00 -0400

whyidontskateboard:

Yeah, I’m a Haight cruster. I got a malnourished dog, tons of nugs and a serious longboard.

The name of this poem is “Haight Street”:

Greeeeeeeeeeeeeenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbudsgreenbuds

catchinair: In a part edited this clip lasts one second For...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 09:12:04 -0400

catchinair:

In a part edited this clip lasts one second

For non Noe Valleyons, this is where Jersey St terminates, at Douglas St. It is steep as fuck.

Photo

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:03:06 -0400

Photo

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:15:57 -0400

thejogging: Galaxy Foamposite RiFF RAFF Prototype, 2013 Digital...

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 19:19:46 -0400

thejogging:

Galaxy Foamposite RiFF RAFF Prototype, 2013

Digital image

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Riff Raff net art, folks. You are here, now.

Photo

Thu, 30 May 2013 13:29:33 -0400

Matt’s

Wed, 29 May 2013 13:47:43 -0400

Matt’s

The Coolest Thing to Happen to Me on a Phoner

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:49:00 -0400

I was on a phoner with a dude doing GOD-KNOWS-WHAT in Indonesia, and as he’s describing some detail of New York nightlife in the 1990’s, he tells me to hold on. He has to go through security.

And then he put the phone down on the x-ray machine’s conveyor belt and presumably walked through a nearby metal detector, while this device making a wireless connection between Jakarta and New York City was beamed with high-frequency electromagnetic radiation so that a high-school dropout (or whatever the Indonesian equivalent is) could glance at its insides to make sure it wasn’t a bomb or a gun. The call wasn’t dropped.

So I sat there in my cubicle for a minute or so, listening to the inside of an x-ray machine halfway across the world, a place I’ll never see in a place I’ll never see. Disappointingly, it sounded like nothing at all.

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:21:55 -0400

Photo

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:02:50 -0400

☑ The deep sadness I feel when I think about all I might have...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:05:00 -0400

☑ The deep sadness I feel when I think about all I might have accomplished had I not started drinking recreationally as a high schooler.

“Weird” “Twitter,” you just don’t...

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:12:25 -0400

“Weird” “Twitter,” you just don’t get it sometimes.