Media Mindfulness

Ad Council’s new support the troops ads are a thinly veiled pro-war campaign. Its tag line, “Don’t let their enemy’s presence be felt more than yours,” with a classic war movie silhouette at sunset, reaffirms all the noble stereotypes of war. When ever the war gets unpopular we always get hit over the head with […]

**Update**

This whole Chevy thingy is going crazy viral.

**

Democracy can be dangerous… to car commercials. You can remix the Taho ad at Chevy’s Web site. But if you blink, it may be too late. Catch these unwitting culture jams before they get tossed down the memory hole:

Here

Here

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“Sci-fi happens,” Mike Davis

One of the most interesting, most cantankerous writers on the urban and demographic realities of the new century is Mike Davis, who made a name for himself in his subaltern history of LA, City of Quartz. His latest missive, Planet of Slums, can be viewed as the latest in his series of […]

Update:
Democracy Now! devotes its show to the student walkout in SoCal.
Talk about extracurricular activity! Apparently many of the high school students who walked out of class on Monday in Southern Califaztlan to protest the proposed draconian immigration bill (HR 4437) had been inspired by the film, Walkout, which taught the kids a lesson they probably […]

One of the least discussed aspects of media is the extent to which the auto industry actually shores up programming and content. In our ad-based media system, car commercials represent the single largest group of ads. My non-scientific estimate is that car ads account for roughly 25% of primetime airtime on television. With a slumping […]

‘Bout time!
NYC sinkhole swallows up SUV - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com:

“A city street collapsed under a sport utility vehicle early Monday, leaving the vehicle nose down into a deep sinkhole that officials said was caused by a water main break.”

(Via MSNBC)

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The Internet is all about tomorrow, but the way my schedule is, it’s all about yesterday. But like the pile of books growing in my flat like slime mold (if only they could pay rent!), it may take ten years to get through them, but when the time is right, they’ll get read. Which brings […]

This is slightly old news, but it needs to be said again that Brinco shoes are slammin’, and it is one of the few occasions when conspicuous consumption is in order. Commissioned by inSite-05, artist Judi Werthein designed these for border crossers who face real dangers, but for me they appeal to my inner-alien (I […]

OK, the phenomena of Tila Tequila caught my eye (literally), giving me pause about the nexus of celebrity culture and social networks. Her bio reads like a manifesto of post-irony, the sad, commodified afterlife of punk’s impact on capitalism.

As you can see in the comments below from her MySpace page, she bemoans the shallowness of […]

Go to Apocalypse Pooh! - do it- don’t waste a moment- go now!

(Note: you may have to hit enter again on the URL if the movie doens’t load; also the intro is way too long- be patient- it’s worth the wait!)

“See Piglet suddenly transformed into Dennis Hopper’s mind-blown journalist! See Pooh pulled by […]

NBC reports the latest blame game: the war in Iraq is the media’s fault. Kinda funny since the mainstream media, thanks to the Pentagon, is generally only allowed the US military’s POV (point of view). I suppose you could blame the government’s PR handlers for losing the war. After all, bombs don’t kill people, cameras […]

Some pals in New York City are doing this really cool art project. Read below for details. If you are in the city, do drop in. From their announcement:

SHOPDROPPING.NET EXHIBITION 2006, opening party on April 1st, 7 to 9 pm.

(shop drop) v. To covertly place merchandise on display in a store. Primarily […]

Here is an ambiguous short review of an ambiguous movie. Rather than spoil the plot, which is fairly nuanced, I’d say that first of all, V is for Vendetta is better than the Matrix Trilogy, the first follow-up by the Wachowski Brothers. The film is not dominated by action sequences, and is philosophically more complex. […]

What happens when you give to seemingly oppositional social forces disposable cameras? Hopefully a more humanized image of conflict, in this case the Minutemen vs. illegal border-crossers coming from Mexico. The Border Film Project supplied disposable cameras to immigrants in Mexican shelters and asked them to document their journeys. The vigilante Minutemen group who are […]

Two words: Humpty-Dumpty.

This morning you woke up buried in $30,000 more debt, thanks to the new Congressional budget, and what you will pay in taxes to cover it.

This image, created by the artist mibi, does a nice job of mapping out what taxes actually pay for. Guess what the big circles represent… The image speaks volumes […]

Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a debate that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between 2 “wolves” inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It […]

Implicit in the following LA Times story is a lament from the industry (yet more evidence that all media do is report on themselves) that the era of an informed citizenry is a thing of the past because there will be no infrastructure for information gathering. Corporate media love to think of themselves as the […]

Read Part I here.

Dadadelica remixes the sublime: the awesome strangeness of the impermanent hybridreal that causes the human ego to flitter when facing the greater chaosmoses. Jim O’Roarke’s “Door 2005″ video installation does just that. On the peripheral walls are shuttering doors in stereo, presumably alluding to the doors of perception, and facing you is […]

Read Part I here.

Read Part II here

Here is a note on the Fifth Floor Mezzanine Biennial subshow, “Down by Law“: Yeah, yeah, America (oh yeah, Amerika with a ‘k’) is a terrible dark place of torture, etc. Tell me something new, enlighten me. One piece that really deserves attention, though, is Kerry Tribe’s video of […]