The Advent of the Marijuana Celebrity-Industrial-Complex?
A smokey selfie from Rihanna's Instagram.
In the wake of the recent marijuana legalization measures that passed in Colorado and Washington last month, it’s high time to consider the marketing future of weed. (The global alcoholic beverage industry is a multi-billion dollar a year business, after all.) In Sunday’s New York Times, I look at today’s most endorsement-savvy pot heads — all female pop stars under the age of 30. A CBS News poll taken after the election show that half of the country favors legalizing the drug for recreational use, particularly amongst women and pro-pot millenials who make up these singers’s core fan bases.
On a semi-related note, take a listen to the Them Jeans remix of “Stay” (one of the few songs off Rihanna’s new album “Unapologetic” that doesn’t actually have an illusion to getting high).
“Seriously Unserious About Fashion”
"John Chamberlain. Rudolf Stingel. Walrus, Carsten Höller. (Gagosian Gallery, D7)" from Dis Magazine's "Fair Trade" series.
In Sunday’s NYT, I profiled Dis Magazine, a Web magazine that is “more interested in Burlington Coat Factory than Prada.” Because the piece was published in the Sunday Styles section of the paper, I focused primarily on the DIS’s clever, near-Derridian take on fashion and art. But there is a lot of other great stuff on the site, including mixes, politics, and pop-culture think pieces to DIScover.
“An Oral History of Grizzly Bear”
Ed Droste recounts an “oral history” of his band Grizzly Bear to me in the Winter 2012 issue of V Man. (Disclaimer alert: he is one of my closest friends.) I have almost a decade of Grizzly Bear concerts under my belt, from the early days at Tonic to Radio City Music Hall. My parents went to check out the band’s October show at the Fox Theater in Oakland, CA and said Ed and co. attracted a “really cool crowd.” Thanks, Mom.
Check out “Gun-Shy,” one of my favorite tracks off their latest record “Shields.”
A Conversation With The Tumblr Evangelists
David Karp of Tumblr shot by Ari Marcopoulos for Vogue Hommes Japan.
Valentine Uhovski, Tumblr's "Fashion Evangelist."
My interview with David Karp, the 26-year-old co-founder of Tumblr, and Valentine Uhovski, the micro-blogging site’s “Fashion Evangelist” (his actual title), is in the current issue of Vogue Hommes Japan. The theme of the issue is the new “Digital Manifesto.” While copies of the magazine are on newsstands now, the text is in Japanese. Here is an English translation of my unedited conversation with two leaders of the Tumblr ministry.
How and why did you first start Tumblr?
David: Tumblr was very much inspired by this community of avante garde bloggers that were hacking around with new approaches to blogging. I just wanted to be one of the people from that community hacking together my own ideas towards what a blog could be. I wanted to create something that fitted that community, which I felt apart of but also greatly admired. When I had it ready to go, Tumblr was simply a tool for anyone to make a blog like mine. So I went to that community and said, “Hey guys, I built this tool do to this thing.” I was hoping Tumblr would validate a point of a lot people that there are some other dimensions of blogging that hadn’t been explored yet. The first network of people I showed it to were excited and started posting about it on different forums. Out of that early developer-hacker community, we got 10,000 of users. In a couple weeks, we were up to almost 100,000. Continue reading “A Conversation With The Tumblr Evangelists” »
You Are What You Eat
Over at Interview magazine’s blog, I wrote about the artist and chef Julia Ziegler-Haynes. “Today’s Special,” a new book of her work published by OHWOW, showcases photographs of her hand-cooked reproductions of the last meals requested by prisoners on death row before their scheduled execution. Julia told me that over the several years she worked on this project, the poignant undercurrent to each of the prisoner’s food requests made her recognize the “emotional intensity” between mealtime and everyday life. This connection was so strong it actually inspired her to become a chef professionally. I’ve had the pleasure of eating many of Julia’s meals and I can say with a full stomach that she understands the importance of cooking every dish with a big heart.
“Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table”
"Fuck your frame cluster" from "Frame Cluster Friday."
The judgmental bluntness of the blog Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table gives me an existential crisis, mostly because the majority of people I know (myself included), restaurants I frequent, and retail spaces I hit up are guilty of the site’s “fuck yous.” So it was not too surprising — somewhat reassuring even — to discover that I actually had known one of the individuals behind the site for several years now. Fearing the wrath of crafternooners, disgruntled Design Within Reach sales staff or sensitive Wythe Avenue residents, the two interior-design terrorists use the nom de Tumblr Mr. and Mrs. Lizard (pronounced “Luh-zahrd,” they told me.) Over email, I asked them about their favorite F.U.’s and how they first came to understand the tyranny of terrariums.
When did you start the Tumblr?
We started the blog in March but the idea was born a few years ago after we had just moved in together. We looked to the internet as a home decorating resource and it quickly turned out to be more amusing than useful because we kept seeing the same five ideas recycled over and over. The Noguchi coffee table, a beautiful but over represented piece of midcentury sculpture, became the symbol of this phenomenon for us. Continue reading ““Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table”” »
Grizzly Bear, “Yet Again”
Another new Grizzly Bear track has been released. Hear “Yet Again” from the band’s coming album “Shields.”
