(Source: rainbowposts, via weareradical)

Awesome Minimalist Movie and TV Poster Art by Daniel Keane
Venkman, geektyrant.com

Here’s an awe­some series min­i­mal­ist movie and TV poster art cre­at­ed by Daniel Keane. The posters fea­ture films such as Jaws, Heat, Jur­ra­sic Park, The Dark Knight, Indi­ana Jones, The Shin­ing, Die Hard and sev­er­al poster designs …

(Source: citizendev)

Is the popularity of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” a sign that we are moving to a more organic, down to earth cool? Obviously this is now a mainstream song, but nonetheless it’s obviously very different than most songs you see topping the charts, as he points out in this interview:

“The thing I feel best about seeing my song resonating with more people than any of my previous material has or getting a chance to, you know, get in the charts, and be selling higher and things like that, is that it hasn’t been by any conscious construction to try and fit the current mold of pop music. It’s taken me by surprise, I really didn’t expect this song to sort of, you know, be a pop crosser… a lot of pop music these days that sort of, you know, sits at the top of the charts… I mean not to say that the lyrics aren’t important, but I mean, it certainly feels to me like most of the things people are singing about are being in the club… and I’m not much of a club person myself- I don’t dislike going to clubs but I don’t go regularly and I sort of feel like, you know, it’d be nice if there was some more material that people were engaging with rather than, you know, whats happening in the club all the time (laughs). So maybe people are looking for a breath of fresh air and if this song is one of the things that you know, has brought that then that’s great.”

Is 4/20 cool? 

4/20 actually has it origins in my neck of the woods, at San Rafael High School just about 10 minutes from my house. You can check out the full history here. So I definitely have a little pride that this incredibly well known national “celebration” (I don’t think holiday would exactly be the right word, sounds too official, like the something the government says is a holiday) started in little ‘ol Marin County, CA.

But is 4/20 actually cool? I guess the idea that everyone gets baked for a day and just does whatever they want is cool in that you’re sort of flipping off the rest of the world, the authorities, and whatever responsibilities you have in your life and doing whatever you feel like (smoking weed). But now that this is such a mainstream event is it really that cool anymore? Since everyone is doing it, does that mean the people who dont get really “kafackled” on 4/20 are actually the cool ones? Just somethin to think about….

Gettin’ ready to buy my Outside Lands Music Festival ticket tomorrow, and I look over the lineup again and who do I see…? Die Antwoord…. Guess I’ll be seeing Ben’s favorite song, “Rich Bitch” live in August! Can’t wait…?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bdeizHM9OU&ob=av2e

I think when I review my tumblr work from the past semester, I’m going to discover a pretty severe addiction to Thought Catalog……

Some of the funny/somewhat relevant ones:

“1. If his greatest attribute is “SWAG,” run in the opposite direction. (Don’t worry, there’s a 98% chance that his jeans will be sagging below his rear, so he’ll have no shot at catching you.) ”

“5. Don’t take advice or listen to the hardships of being an independent, single woman from a rich musician (married to an even wealthier man)… I’m specifically referring to Beyoncé.”

“10. Stretch marks aren’t as significant as you think. I’ve never heard of a (half-decent) guy rejecting a girl he liked because of such a petty thing.”

“15. Not all social events need be turned into photo shoots. Don’t forget to actually experience things because you’re busy taking pictures.”

“16. Eat a friggin’ hamburger if you want to! Curvy, healthy looking girls are far more attractive than skeletons.”
 

After Ella’s presentation and our discussion on religion other day, I thought this was interesting.

”Though I dislike the word spirituality itself, mainly due to all its religious connotations, I understand the word’s significance. Spirituality is simply an adjective that is used to describe the search for one’s place in the universe.

No one wants to feel alone in life, and even if you are alone, being spiritual makes you feel connected to the world and other people in it. Atheists get that, and it is important, maybe even essential, to our species’ psychological makeup to feel this way. “ 

Like Laura was saying, this whole hologram thing could become… well, a “thing”. I was talking to a friend yesterday and we were joking about how they could do some sort of “all stars” concert and bring back all these huge artists from the dead to perform. The two that we thought of that I was surprised not to see on this list were Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson (he gets a shout out at the end but isnt actually included). 

I definitely think the original push towards the more “organic” cool has started with the consumer- using the dove example, I think women really were sick of seeing unrealistic images in the media, and dove marketers picked up on that so they designed an ad campaign to cater to us. However as we go forward, I agree that it could become a situation where the media directs our perception of cool in a certain way so we continue to fall for their marketing campaigns featuring average, everyday people. But like we were saying in class I think its also a case of who adapts the fastest: we’re constantly trying to outsmart the media’s marketing campaigns so as not to fall for their “traps”, but the media is also always trying to adapt and figure out what we want to see/what will sell their products. So where cool goes and who is responsible for driving that change is probably going to be determined by whoever adapts the fastest.

whatscooleng106:

Today’s presentations described the future of cool as an organic one, where society will gravitate away from technology and revert back to natural things. However, could this just be all part of marketing’s scheme to manipulate society and make us buy their products? For example, take Dove’s ad…

(via cool106)

Just some previews of my presentation…

Here’s another short one: “Super Models Without Photoshop”

lfrizzell:

You may find the following article about a software tool that rates how much something was photoshopped interesting:

http://mashable.com/2011/11/29/photoshop-celebrities-models/

And for anybody else, it mirrors what I talked about in class.