June 2008
16. Reign In Blood
There was some interview where Morrison said that Final Crisis is the “death metal” version of the DC Universe - given his interest in making comics ‘feel like’ pop (cf Marvel Boy) I wonder if this explains some of the pacing decisions: grand uber-symphonic sweeps expressed using complex and technical and deceptively crude means.
15. Erase humanity's capacity for language.
It has taken a long time, but a phrase has emerged from the memepit that surpasses “Two words:” in its ability to flag up the complete absence of interesting thought. Step forward, “Wow. Just…wow.” and take your bow.
14. Comics Marketing Talk
I am not quite nerdy enough to post this anywhere yet, maybe on FT:
Yr basic marketing/branding theory would suggest that DC Comics should just offer a refund for Countdown To Final Crisis - basically they should say, as splashily as possible: yes, we messed up, these stories didn’t line up. If you feel your money was wasted because of this, clip and send us the covers for issues #26 to #1...
13. Solange Knowles - "Sandcastle Disco"
I am willing to bet that S Knowles, or her songwriters, have never tried to blow away a sandcastle. WASH me away, for gods sake. WASH. Pop needs an editor.
12. All Our Lives
I realised in the research 2.0 workshop today that Readers’ Wives porno mags were the beginnings of the user generated content revolution. We should recognise these noble pioneers! Obviously their business model was in some ways naive: they paid the models, for instance.
“Also, as anyone who has studied social networks knows, there are some quite...”
– http://broadstuff.com/archives/1035-The-Limits-to-Social-Media-and-the-opening-of-Pandoras-Box..html
10. Flower in the dustbin
Me on the Popular comments thread on God Save The Queen:
“you can just as much see the ’story’ of Popular as a succession of relationships and tensions that drive pop development and push each other out:
- the relationship between song and performance - the relationship between teenager and adult - the relationship between single and album - the relationship between the charts and outside...
9. From Lee Smolin, "The Trouble With Physics"
The discussion has brought out seven unusual aspects of the string theory community.
1. Tremendous self-confidence, leading to a sense of entitlement and of belonging to an elite community of experts.
2. An unusually monolithic community, with a strong sense of consensus, whether down to the evidence or not, and an unusual uniformity of views on open questions. These views seem related to the...
8. Was eBay a fad?
Was eBay a fad? Why are auctions dying out? Instability of competitive community? Auctions as a gaming environment won by l33t players? Simple nomadic interweb stuff - ppl get bored, move on? Mishandling by eBay?
I need to sell all my old CDs.
7. "I Feel Love"
Ptolemaic pop - cycles and epicycles.
6. Secret Invasion #3
Liked all the side business (Jarvis, Osborn). Liked the Stark is he isn’t he bits, good bloodshot eye art there. Storytelling wretched in main fight scene, art gaudy, Nick Fury has an amusingly 90s BIG GUN.
5. -ism
I have decided I don’t approve of capitalising the word pop to try and imply some kind of platonic essence of same.
4. Silly Sod
Problem w/Rod S is always credibility - having made himself the hero of his breakout hit it’s so hard for him to step out into ‘character’ (hence 1st Cut is rub)
3. Representation
Line of argument:
Traditional MR - model of world by representative sample. No interaction among participants so normal distribution applies. Also can’t measure effects of interaction well so the model doesn’t behave like the world.
Interactive MR (eg panels, predictive markets) - interacton means you’d expect power law style distribution (1 or 2 dominate...
2. Bowie - "We Are The Dead"
“People will hold us to blame… it hit me today” - this line really freaked me out when I was 14 (& still does). Wonder if he’d become a parent recently - check Zowie birthdate.
1. The Buzz.
I want to have a thing where I can just make notes, say things w/o justification, not worry about whether sentences are well put together etc ect.
Anything interesting here will hopefully appear somewhere else sometime.
