Category Archives: Media & Culture
Life in 2 minutes
Portrait of Lotte
What coffee shops say about where we live
“Independent coffee shops are positive markers of a living community. They function as social spaces, urban offices, and places to see the world go by. Communities are often formed by having spaces in which people can have casual interactions, and local and walkable coffee shops create those conditions, not only in the coffee shop themselves, but on the sidewalks around them. […] Coffee shops are unlike other community assets in that they enable us to mingle with strangers in ways that we might not in restaurants, to meet a wider range of people than we would in a bar, to linger in ways that we don’t at the grocery store, or to people-watch with an ease that would be awkward almost anywhere else.” — Washington Post
Banksy
Bulletproof Clothing
I’d guess one of the most common reasons for owning and carrying a firearm is self-defense. If someone tries to break into your home or your car, you can shoot them. If someone starts shooting in the bar (or church or classroom) you’re at, you can shoot them, to save your life and the lives of others.
If you expect to find yourself in some place where getting shot seems like a real possibility, why not wear a bulletproof vest? For example, if I was going clubbing in a rough neighborhood, wouldn’t a good kevlar vest be more useful than a glock?
No good against a head-shot, granted. But I’ll bet the data would show those are more rare than taking one in the torso.
Would wearing a vest be less “manly” in some way? Would like to know what percentage of hand gun owners also have body armor of some kind.
Augmented Television
Watch a few minutes of this and tell me you don’t want one of these. This is clearly where things are headed. I can’t wait.
True Detective: Places that once had purpose
From a good piece in Mother Jones on how T Bone Burnett chooses music for True Detective
“This show does not avert its gaze,” Burnett says. “It takes a good, hard look at who we are right now, in a very profound way…I live in Los Angeles, and I recently took a drive through the middle of the country, and I was stunned by what I saw. In places that had once had purpose, all that’s left is a pawnshop, next to a gun shop, next door to a motel, next door to a gas station, with a Walmart right outside of town. There are people working three jobs just to get by and having to take methamphetamines to do it. That’s the middle of the country, and that’s a plague that’s spreading outwards.
I grew up (and live) smack dab in the middle of the country which might be why this series resonates so strongly for me. I remember when those places had purpose and have watched it slowly disappear to be replaced by something real dark.
Cable news audience old and white
How old is the cable news audience? According to a piece by Frank Rich in New York Magazine, real old. And real white.
With a median viewer age now at 68 according to Nielsen data through mid-January (compared with 60 for MSNBC and CNN, and 62 to 64 for the broadcast networks), Fox is in essence a retirement community.
Two percent of Mitt Romney’s voters were black. According to new Nielsen data, only 1.1 percent of Fox News’s prime-time viewership is (as opposed to 25 percent for MSNBC, 14 percent for CNN, and an average of roughly 12 percent for the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs)
True Detective
“Think of the hubris it must take to yank a soul out of non-existence into this meat. To force a life into this thresher. My daughter spared me the sin of being a father.”
Whew. I mean… fuck.ing.whew. Just watched the second episode of True Detective (HBO). It’s too early to compare it to other series, we’ll have to see if it can sustain this level of intensity. I hope so? [Season 1. Season 2 sucked donkey balls]
I found myself thinking of other movie detective partners. Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman in Se7en. Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider in The French Connection. McNulty and Bunk in The Wire. But Matthew McConaughey brings something I haven’t seen in awhile. (Never?) Maybe it’s what Curtis said… the business with the cigarettes? I almost passed out a couple of times, holding my breath, waiting for him to exhale. I also heard echoes of Martin Sheen’s voice-overs from Apocalypse Now.
UPDATE: And how many cigarettes did McConaughey smoke? 40. Someone counted.