Rogueish

Did Nicki fail pop, or did pop fail Nicki?

04/17/12

Except Bieber IS working with Hit-Boy! So did Rihanna. Her track wasn’t great, so I’m not particularly thrilled about this.

I think this makes clear the mistaken premise of the original post. I’m not at all sure hip-hop even exists as something distinct any more - the legacy of the Neptunes and Timbaland is that almost everything in the charts is more-or-less hip-hop now (in particular the influence of euro-house sounds on pop came via hip-hop, not as an alternative to it). Note that “The last actual hip-hop rap song to hit number one,” referenced in one of the earlier posts in this thread, “Black and Yellow,” was produced by Stargate, who I gues you could call hip-hop producers, but they’re also undeniably pop producers.

(Source: jordansargent)

48 notes

04/16/12

His relationship to his father and his guilt at not having fought in the Second World War have long been themes in Spielberg’s films, but they combine in a particularly creepy way in War of the Worlds. With the idea of a redemptive war for the natural/natal/familial community, Spielberg becomes something like a boomer Ernst Jünger.

2 notes

04/16/12

It occurred to me I didn’t know my dog. I only knew the sad version of my dog. I had no idea what my dog would want if he stopped being sad. Would he want to be around me?

1 note

04/15/12

In 1839 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of flânerie in the arcades. (Benjamin, The Arcades Project, M3,8)

(Source: youtube.com)

3 notes

Senki Zesshō Symphogear - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia→

04/11/12

A girl named Hibiki Tachibana attends a concert held by Tsubasa Kazanari and Kanade Amō, who form the pop duo, ZweiWing. In the middle of the concert, the stadium is attacked by an alien race known as Noise who begin killing the attendees. Tsubasa and Kanade summon mechanical battle armor known as Symphogear to fight off the Noise, but soon find themselves in a pinch. Kanade tries to protect Hibiki, but she is hit by a stray fragment of Kanade’s armor. With her suit losing power, Kanade sings a song that destroys all the Noise, but at the cost of her own life. Back in the present, Hibiki, who was able to survive, is attending Lydian Music Academy alongside her friend, Miku Kohinata, while Tsubasa, who goes to the same school, continues to fight the Noise alone. As Hibiki goes into town to buy a new CD, she comes across a Noise attack and tries to help a young girl get to safety. When they become cornered, she sings the song she heard Kanade sing that day which ends up giving her Symphogear armor.

There were rumors at one point of a tATu anime; if it had happened I think it might have been something like this (the title of which apparently means Swansong of the Valkyries, which is pretty good, although not as good a title as Bodacious Space Pirates or Dance in the Vampire Bund).

We Need To Talk About (The Intrinsic Fascism Of) Manufactured Pop Music « Echo & Boom→

04/09/12

Manufactured pop music cannot serve as a utopian model because it is already part and microcosm of the dystopian economic model of the present.

This is exactly wrong. Manufactured pop music can only serve as a utopian model because it is already part and microcosm of the dystopian economic model of the present.

2 notes

04/09/12

The important thing with QR codes though is to think of them as using electromagnetic radiation to transmit encoded intelligence to your portable computing device because then they are hella steampunk.

8 notes

katherine st asaph

04/09/12

wtfqrcodes:

why put a QR code on a web page when I’m already online?

QR codes on web pages are useful if you want to transfer information from your computer to your phone, though. Our university library catalog shows QR codes for books, so you can scan them rather than writing down the call number and location. Presumably you could do something similar with Google Books if you wanted to compare prices with physical bookshops or something?

(Source: wtfqrcodes)

14 notes

04/08/12

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World includes a lot of visual references to video games, but they all seem to have been added by someone who doesn’t know how video games work. The point of all the little glyphs, meters, effects in games is to communicate something, to show what the player can interact with and which actions get the player closer to achieving the games goals. For instance, when I saw the “pee bar” appear in this scene, I thought they were setting up a running joke where the pee bar would later appear at inopportune moments, letting us see that Scott Pilgrim needs to pee. But that’s not what happens; although there is a running gag about Scott running off to pee to avoid awkward moments, it’s conveyed entirely verbally, and the pee bar never appears again after this scene. The point of these visuals in video games, that is, is to induct the player into the logical world of the game, explaining a series of rules through which this world can be navigated, but that’s just what Scott Pilgrim vs. the World lacks. Nothing in the film ever happens for any kind of reason, and so it lacks any kind of weight; it is, instead, like some guy saying “oh, do you remember Street Fighter 2” for two hours, which is, sadly, a bit boring.

(Source: youtube.com)

3 notes

04/04/12

jimbreuer replied to your post: C. L. R. James on Stalinist devotion to a top-down…

Can’t tell if CLR, or Stalinism as described by CLR, is what reminds you of that passage; the first comparison is obvious, and it’s interesting to sort of contort myself trying to make the second one work

It’s Stalinism as described by James that reminds me of Marx’s comments on utopian socialism. The passage I quoted comes from a longer argument that Stalinism maintains the division between intellectual and manual labor, and so depends on the idea that the revolution can be planned by intellectuals, and ends up substituting these plans for the actual revolutionary developments of the working class.