nevermind the bricolage

Notcot

Apparently Notcot is as mad about these Puma Penguins as I am. The Santa Monica Puma store has been a window display treat this holiday season. The Penguins are a little like Paul Smith's plastic rabbits, but far more sleek and modern in design--very, very cool (but there again, they are penguins).

Hand Cream

My brother just arrived from London armed with a special gift for me--some Bunny Munro Replenishing Hand Cream, courtesy of the Nick Cave show he went to a few weeks back. What a lovely gift and it will come in so handy as my fingers turn the pages of the Death of Bunny Munro once more--I mean what else would you need hand cream for?!

What Matters Now

Seth Godin is offering a free download of his book What Matters Now, 70 writers/thinkers/creatives offering up thoughts in response to the book's title. Interesting read for free, thank you Seth.

The Prize

I happened to watch a thriller called The Prize yesterday. It was made in 1963 and starred Paul Newman as a writer who wins the Nobel Prize for Literature and gets caught up in Cold War shenanigans in Oslo. Today, President Obama accepted his Nobel Peace prize, an action made complex by his recent commitment to send more troops to Afghanistan. I can't speak to all the issues surrounding such a move and I think I am grateful that such choices are not part of my everyday life, but I will say that it does make the whole thing surreal. I realize that Peace prize recipients cover a wide spectrum of global situations and circumstances and Obama is not the first recipient who is being rewarded as much for his potential as for his actions, but it is tough that's for sure. It was very interesting to hear the talking heads going round over this---can America celebrate it's President winning the Prize? "He's no Roosevelt," one guy repeated more than once, well Roosevelt is no Obama either for that matter, we are each held captive and find liberation in our own contexts and who knows how things will play out. I must admit I would have liked less justification for the necessity of war and along with it, some sense of a plan for peace laid out, but I am not in his shoes. One can only hold onto shreds of hope that business as usual is not the case, though I fear it is, and trust that the hype was more than hype, that there was/is substance. But I have also lived long enough now not to put my eggs in the institutional basket, whatever institutional basket that might be.

War Is Over

On the 29th anniversary of her husband's murder, Yoko Ono has released the War Is Over poster in more than forty languages--would that war was over.

Life After Shopping

I made it to the Hammer forum event featuring Benjamin Barber and Reverend Billy of the Church of Life After Shopping. It was an interesting evening, although a little frustrating at times. The evening began with a 'sermon' from Rev. Billy basically a recount of his groups Black Friday shopping interventions. He is pretty entertaining, parodying a televangelist--lots of 'amens' and the like and very committed to his cause. He addressed consumerism as a preacher would address sin, complete with call to repentance and a remedy for our moral failure. His answer to consumerism--just say no to shopping, felt simplistic, something that Benjamin Barber addressed in his more formal lecture right after Billy.

For Barber the current situation is more complex and there are no easy answers. He feels that consumerism is essentially a perversion of capitalism and a perversion that is now so deeply embedded in our cultural psyche that breaking it will take more than a just say no campaign. He spent a lot of time addressing the difference between advertising and marketing, the infantilization of adults and the campaigns to create ever younger consumers. Much of what he said rang true, but he kept referring to marketers and media types as "them" as though they are somehow like Big Brother, molding humanity to their whim and will--I am not sure that is an effective analysis either. To demonize the "other," in this case principally marketers and those who create films that infantilize us, seems a cheap shot to me. It is not that I don't think these issues are real, because I do and I worry about those things as well, but I just think that a lot of marketers and film makers are just as lost in all of this as the rest of us, and I don't think they exist as a sort of ruling class above the fray as it were, manipulating and pulling puppet strings. I guess this tension--the chicken/egg issue--is seldom easily resolved.

Ultimately an issue this complex is not going to be sorted out in one ninety minute forum, especially one where there were a couple of quite disruptive anti-consumerists in the audience who thought nothing of interrupting and co-opting the conversation with obnoxious comments, almost railroading the audience participation part in the process. Barber's book, Consumed, looks as though it is an expansion of his lecture, and might hold some deeper insights into his thinking.

World AIDS Day

Questionnaires?

Arise cool cats and do some powerful goodness--Beatniks versus Benjamin (Franklin, that is)

Thunderbirds Away!

This image will likely find some usage over the year--Ascension Day perhaps?!!

Letter

This is a great letter. Others of equal interest can be found here, what a great site.