Category: popcult

“Make it work!”: not just a catchphrase. It’s a philosophy.

Tim Gunn reveals his philosophy behind “Make it work!” in this Time Out interview:

Q: Do people make you say “Make it work” all the time?
Tim Gunn: More frequently they’ll ask me to say, “Where’s Andre?” or “What happened to Andre?” But people tend to shout at me, “Make it work!” It happened coming into this building.

Q: Do you sometimes wish that maybe you had a different phrase?
Tim Gunn: No! I love “make it work.” It’s so good in the classroom for my students. If something isn’t going well, students are always inclined to put it aside and start over again. And I maintain that you don’t really learn anything that way. If you can take something that isn’t working well, and you can wrestle with it, move it to a new level and have it succeed, you learn so much from that. My students can run back to the store and buy a different fabric or a different color, but the Project Runway designers are stuck. They really have to make it work, and I don’t believe in talking to them about things they can’t change. So you don’t hear me saying things like, “You can’t use this red fabric.” It’s more about, “How are you going to make this red fabric work?”

I like that philosophy.

Why am I not freaked out?

Maybe it’s because I’ve been readying myself for the inevitable sci-fi movie misery that will result from the Large Hadron Collider starting up–the black holes, the tiny dragons, the fact that we can’t understand particle physics without smashing subatomic particles into each other–maybe that just puts everything in perspective. My bank just got taken over by the Fed. The economy is collapsing. A third of the world’s species are likely to become extinct in the next few years. The dumbest person in the country is a vice presidential nominee. The presidential campaign seems like a surreal clusterfuck of…well…things that oddly seem more unlikely than string theory.

So, we’re on the verge of handing over nearly a trillion dollars to a dude in our administration, which has an history of making monumentally stupid decisions, with no oversight, no process for appeal, no agreement that this is even a good idea, no idea whether this really even addresses the main problems in the economy… excuse me if I feel like we’re 37 minutes into an episode of House. Let’s start chemo, even though we don’t really think she’s got cancer, because, well, we’ve run out of other ideas. But of course we’ll figure it out by the end of the episode, right?

So maybe that’s why I’m not freaked out. Even though I know I should be. Even though Henry Paulson is clearly no Hugh Laurie. And I’m probably going to be homeless in a year when all this posturing plays out and the economy collapses and the tiny dragons release an EMP that destroys all electrical signals, thus rendering Microsoft useless and Jessica Alba a post-apocalyptic bike messenger…but for some reason I haven’t been able to internalize the peril yet. Or maybe I’m just inured by the last four years of increasing fear of iminent doom, which comes, just a bit less dramatically than a category 3 hurricane, and doesn’t seem as bad as the fear.

Oh, the heart is a bizarre muscle, ain’t she. The brain knows we’re screwed. The body can’t quite imagine life without prime time hospital soap operas. Or that life isn’t a prime time soap opera. Perhaps the Matrix is correcting itself? Or I need to stop watching so much television. Or watch more Dr. Who. Or just buy a lot more sci-fi books before I can’t afford them and stash as I’m on the run from the 21st century.

Do I sound paranoid to anyone?

Shitscared!

The trailer for the upcoming movie Hot Rod reminded me of the sketch “Shitscared” from the old Late Show series that aired in Australia in the early 90’s. I found this clip on YouTube, and I’d bet that these 6 minutes are funnier than the entire movie. Enjoy.

Now I understand Pearl Jam

Anyone who’s ever ridden in my car and been subjected to my mix CDs know’s I love Pearl Jam. But this guy’s take on the lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter is just hilarious:


Pearl Jam is famous for not releasing official lyrics to their songs. Fansites take up the cause, but they’re subject to interpretation of Eddie’s luscious, gravelly voice, which isn’t always crystal clear. I suspect that’s often deliberate, and in fact he’s famous for singing Yellow Ledbetter with differing lyrics at each concert. In fact, I think that’s one of the reasons I like Pearl Jam: with each new listen, I often pick up a new nuance or lyrical turn in the lyrics I’d missed before. I still remember when I figured out the line “All the rusted signs we ignore throughout out lives, choosing the shiny ones instead” which remains one of my favourite PJ lines. Some songs I listen to over and over to the point where I’ve figured out all the lines (I’m looking at you, Love Boat Captain), but at that point the magic seems to diminish.

But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to Yellow Ledbetter again without thinking of Mr Potato Head.

Make me fries…

In case I don’t see you, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Night.

Like the rest of you, the new year has brought many new time wasting activities that have kept me away from the keyboard. There have been very few techno things lately that I’ve had desire to blog about and with everyone else in the world blogging their collective asses off, I haven’t the time to try and compete.

That being said, I came across this article on Wired News in my morning ritual of coffee and RSS feeds.

“Somehow, some viewer relayed a call through Justin’s phone number to the San Francisco 911 and reported a stabbing.” Welcome to daily happenings of Justin.tv, the latest experiment in reality TV on the web. Visitors to the site see a small, low-resolution audio/video feed coming from a camera mounted on star Kan’s head

Ha! That’s a good pr… wait, WHAT? Did I just read that someone has mounted a camera to their head and is streaming it for the world to see? I quickly run over to justin.tv to find out. Sure enough, I see a live feed of Justin sleeping in the fetal position at 6:30 am PST. This is nothing new really… it’s been attempted before by many porn sites. But this is the first time I know of someone strapping a camera to their head and taking it with them everywhere.
History: Based out of San Fran, 4 friends decided that they could make some money by streaming one guys life 24/7. And it looks like it’s working. Justin Kan has only been live for 4 days and 9 hours (although they have been testing for a couple months) and has already managed sponsorship. No stats on how many people are watching Justin, but at one time this morning I counted at least 100 people in the 1st chat room. People watching have access to all that is Justin… dates, parties, bathroom visits, sex (if some girl is willing to have her face/body plastered all over the internets), etc. You can see his schedule for the day, read his blog, call him and even go back through archives at different meetings, etc.
So this begs the question: will “we” watch and why? Is this the same as reading US Weekly or any other media that attempts to bring us into the lives of other, albeit celebrities, people . But Justin isn’t really a celeb… so what’s the appeal? It brings up memories of the movie The Truman Show. Truman unknowingly had the attention of the whole world and thus the appeal of someone being genuine. But Justin knows he’s on so where’s the appeal? Could it be like a mullet or a car wreck? It shouldn’t be that interesting but you just can’t stop watching it. I don’t know what it is, but I’m finding it hard not to watch.

UPDATE: i never thought about txting him. since his phone number is posted on the site, you can txt him and INTERACT with what you’re watching.

Battlestar Galacticons

Here’s a great article from Brad Reed of Sadly, No that combines two of my favorite topics at the moment: the total coolness that is the new Battlestar Galactica series, and the fact that most the ideas of the neocons are based on fantasy, or in this case, science fiction. It seems some of the nutjobs, initially enamored of BSG when it was torturing the Cylons and rigging elections, are unhappy that the humans have recently been cast in the roles of insurgents unhappy that the occupying Cylons are trying to impose their way of life at the point of a gun. The funniest thing to me is that they see BSG as a partisan show that has switched sides. The beauty of BSG has always been that, while often allegorical and referencing current events, it never offers an opinion of right or wrong. It just lets the viewer decide, which is as it should be.

Randall Does Montreal

R.Randall Fransen, mutual friend of the Porter’s and myself, has just spent a week in Montreal with a manufacturer developing some f’in awesome prototype bags for his new company co:labs. Of course he blogged all of it and it is certainly worth a read, especially the post from Wednesday.

instead of being given a ride home by melanie or sasha, a client of theirs was on their way downtown so he offered to give me a ride.  let me set the scene.  his name is tony, he wears a leather jacket, he has thick, black, curly, greasy hair and looks like a wana-be playboy.  he drives a BMW that blares terrible house/techno music and it smells of rich mohogany.  we start down the road back to downtown and tony begins going back and forth on it, waiting for someone else to show up on the side of the road so we can pick them up as well.  in the meantime he begins the challenging chit chat that only comes between a small language barrier. 

“so you like living in new york?” he asks me.  i explain to him that only lived there a short time but that i loved it.  “i hate new york.”  “why?” i ask.  beat.  “too many chinese.  one shows up, opens shop and then 100 more just appear.  they have no imagination…”