Photo The Money

I occasionally check a blog called "Rich Kids of Instagram," which, as the name implies, is a compendium of photos posted by rich teens and twentysomethings. Specifically, it's photos showing off their wealth. Well, I've noticed a few things about it:

• Expensive Stuff is Often Surprisingly Ugly

  You'd think that a rich person would be able to surround themselves with great beauty, since they can afford the best and latest designs. But more often, the expensive items in their surroundings work so hard to look expensive that they don't actually look good. Gold trimmed stuff looks nice when it's used with restraint, but when it's on everything it's just overpowering.
  
  If I was super-rich, I'd commission Frank Gehry to design my house, and the interior would look like it burst from an M.C. Escher drawing. But these houses are just marble-column overload. You're reminded that it's expensive, but it doesn't really look exceptional. It's only the quality of the marble, and the lack of price tags on everything, that tell you you're in a house and not a shopping mall.

• They Don't Look Like They're Having Much Fun

  Some of that is of course because whoever chooses the photos for the blog is picking the ones that emphasize their richness rather than fun. So a photo of teens awkwardly posing with a magnum of champaign wins out over kids genuinely enjoying playing with their gold-plated X-Box One. But still, you'd think that they'd occasionally be having fun doing something that shows off their wealth. I'm still waiting for a photo to come with the hashtag #CaviarFight.
  
  What it actually looks like is that these kids are having about as much fun as other teens. That is, they're going through the motions of what their peers have told them is fun, without actually having fun.

• They Don't Mind Looking Rich

  Again, this is a product of the blog selecting the most stereotypical photos. But still, I would have expected that rich kids would have tried hard to look like they aren't rich. You know, kids are so often driven to be something they aren't on the principle that the grass is always greener. Or at least, the need for independence would drive them to show that they aren't typical rich kids. But no, apparently there are lots of kids who don't mind looking like they just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren commercial.
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  They Can Do Much Better With Their Cars

  This is an area where I have some interest and knowledge, and it's a little disappointing. Certainly, I'd like to have their collection of cars. But, well, first of all, they don't seem to be enjoying them so much as showing them off. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they aren't taking selfies while driving their Lamborghinis at the limit, but I can't help feel like it's a waste for these cars to sit on a driveway looking impressive.
  
  And it would be nice if they had a little more intriguing selection. For one thing, there's a lot of cars that are big on showing off wealth without showing technical ability, like Rolls Royces and Bentleys. And even the sexier cars are just the same few over and over. You'd think some rich kid who reads Car and Driver for the articles would spend his allowance on a classic car that he can lord over his friends. Or just go for an unusual modern car: why get yet another Bugatti when you can be the only one on your block with a Koenigsegg or a Spyker?

This Is Hardcore

Is the whole world turning into a video game? For instance, I'm thinking I should carry bandaids and a random amount of ammuntion with me at all times. That's in case I die: I'm just assuming that whoever finds me will naturally expect that when searching a body.

Games are infecting sports too. It used to be that sports video games played quite unrealistically, because you could find an abnormally successful strategy. For instance, football teams would score 200 points a game, just by running the same play over and over. But now, that's been flipped backwards: A great performance in real-life sports is often described as "like a video game." So rather than games wishing they could be more like reality, we have real people wishing they were more like games.

And now movies are going gamey. There's this new movie Hardcore Henry, which is an action movie filmed entirely from the point of view of the protagonist. So it's essentially a First Person Shooter movie.

It appears it's not just the perspective that is borrowed from games. I'm only going by the ads and a few early reviews, but it appears to have the same outlandish backstory that's just to set up a simple action story. It also seems to have the same awkwardly one-way conversations, and arms and legs that only occassionally show up and don't really look like they're attached to you. And that title: although modern games have movie-sized budgets that ensure names are cleared by a hundred focus groups, "Hardcore Henry" is the sort of let's-leave-it-up-to-the-programmers title we had to get used to twenty years ago. Even "Hardcore Hank" would have worked better.

The irony is that this movie is out at the same time that the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is coming out. Movies are reducing you to one perspective, like older games. Meanwhile, the games are going to try to give us the chance to see more perspectives, like movies.

Entire Facade

Definition: Pornonym

This is something you want to search for on the Internet, but you're afraid to Google it, because it will get a large number of unintended hits. For instance, I wanted to know who does the song used as the theme on Samantha Bee's new show, Full Frontal. But of course, if I Google "Full Frontal," I'll get something completely different.

Definition: Cryptosurf

So I have to go on some roundabout way of approaching it. I look up Samantha Bee at Wikipedia, link to the show's entry, and read about it's theme song there (Peaches - "Boys Wanna Be Her")

Definition: Surfeilaphobia

In addition, there's the phenomena where you're not afraid of the results of the search, but you're afraid of the consequences if anyone is spying on you. Say, you see a news report on ISIS, and are interested in learning more by searching online. But you know that may get you put on a no-fly list.

Definition: Pornimbular Letdown

The next level is to fear the consequences of strange sounding files in your computer. You might write a largely-innocent article for your blog and save it to the cloud in a file called "full frontal." That will pique the interest of some hacker, before dealing great disappointment at its content. Then next thing you know, someone has put me on a no-fly list.

My Baby Drove Up In A Brand New Cadillac

I recently saw an item on Motoring TV with Cadillac introducing their latest model, the CT6. While promoting it, exec Uwe Ellinghaus was asked that old question about how they are going to attract younger buyers when they have a reputation as the old person's car. He has an interesting answer: he pointed out that the newest buyers are the children of the yuppies that fell in love with BMWs back in the 80's. So for them, German luxury cars are the old person's car, while they don't have much reason to be prejudiced against Cadillac.

That's an interesting lesson on how different generations can have different perspectives on the same items. But I'm not sure it's going to work out the way Cadillac is hoping. I mean, for the last twenty years, I've been waiting for Harley-Davidson's reputation to fall apart: for years now, their stereotypical badass rebel customers has been outnumbered by baby boomers desperate to rediscover their youth. And yet, a generation of middle-aged suburban customers hasn't seemed to dilute the brand's image. It seems that old people buying products isn't making them as uncool as they used to.

See, you would think that brand effects would go both ways. To use another automotive example, Porsche has a sporty image because of the sports cars it sells, so they sell lots of SUVs to people who want to feel sporty. But you'd think that actual sporty people wouldn't want to buy Porsche sports cars anymore, since they sell SUVs to suburbanite posers. Yet that doesn't seem to happen; Porsche maintains its reputation however many overpowered family transporters it sells.

So why is this? It could be that marketeers are skilled enough to maintain a brand's identity through advertising. After all, Nike is still seen as the brand of Michael Jordan, even though on the strength of sheer numbers, they should be the brand of white teenagers with poor spending priorities.

Or maybe the association with different populations isn't as toxic as it once was. Much as the media continues to portray millennials as some alien race, the fact is that social media encourages us to seek out people with similar interests and perspectives, even if they have very different backgrounds. It could be that a young motorbike enthusiast feels more of a kinship with an elderly biker who at least shares some values, than with a young person who's okay with getting everywhere by public transit. Ironically the social media that young people embrace actually makes them more like everyone else in society.

Bully For Billy

I just read that the designer of Ikea's Billy Bookcase has died. If you're not familiar with it, it's one of Ikea's most popular and long-running items.  I have two of them. How popular is it?  Well, you could click that link and read it's Wikipedia page.  Or you could just contemplate that it's Ikea furniture with its own Wikipedia page.

Anyway, the designer was Gillis Lundgren, and he actually died several weeks ago.  I don't remember reading about it then, so I assume it just happened to be the same day that Donald Trump said something.  Apparently, Lundgren not only designed Billy, he's also responsible for Ikea's flat-packing. That's right up there with Allen Keys, wordless instructions, and unpronouncable names in defining the Ikea experience, so he was pretty important.

This article I read was in the Toronto Star, so of course they couldn't pay tribute; they had to give him a backhanded putdown on the way to the grave, by quoting a snobby furniture maker criticizing Billy's effect on furniture.  Fortunately, the article did go on to talk about good design, minimalism, etc.  But the article was framed around the idea that Lundgren's contribution has been mixed.

Of course, I've seen this case made before, that Ikea is the McDonald's of furniture, dumbing-down and commodifying a business that was once a focus of the design world.  Sure your Vejmon coffee table is not the height of furniture.  But I have to ask the Ikea haters, where do you think normal people buy furniture?  No, not your urban hipster friends, I mean the majority of people. Generally, the answer is Walmart, Sears, or one of various furniture warehouse chains with TV ads featuring men shouting that you don't have to pay for six years.  Look at it that way and you realize that Ikea is the most design-sophisticated choice.  If they didn't exist, their customers would be buying clichéd old knock-offs of familiar but dull styles.

Really, I wish there were more big-box chains that could get their balance of style and accessibility to the same level as Ikea.  No, I realize I'm never going to go to Best Buy and get a cheap iPad that I assemble myself.  But if I could get Ikea's level of quality and selection in a general department store, I'd never go to Walmart again.  That would be a great contribution to the world, almost as good as encouraging 41 million people to buy bookcases.

That's The End Of The Killerwhaletank

SeaWorld has announced that they will end orca breeding. I found that pretty surprising: yes, it's been getting them very bad publicity, lately, but their identity is quite tied to the performing orcas.

What I'm getting at is, this is about the biggest win I've ever seen activists get. As such, it's interesting to see how people are reacting. The stereotype of activists is that they never give anything but bad news. Environmentalists were traditionally the worst, but in recent years they seem to have realized that this is turning people off. Even David Suzuki seems to understand the benefit of mixing in some positivity.

Animal Rights had never been a cause I was particularly close to, so I'm not really knowledgeable on their reaction. But from what I have seen, as individuals they are quite positive, celebrating this as the win that it is.

On the other hand, PETA put out the protestors' traditional this-isn't-enough reaction. Yes, it's clear that PETA has never really cared about having a positive public perception. But still, you have to wonder: if this doesn't get a positive reaction out of them, what will?

I've always figured that the nothing-is-good-enough attitude from activists comes from their relatively rare motivation pattern: they tend to be spurred to action by the badness of the situation, so they see relentless negativity as a motivator. Unfortunately, for most people downplaying any and all positivity just Leafs to hopelessness, which leads to inaction.

So it might pay to emphasize this victory. Like I say, PETA had positioned itself as an organization for more dedicated, uncompromising people. It's the 70's Greenpeace of Animal Rights. That might mean that the all-negative attitude will work for it.

I Talk About Geek Fight Club

If you're a geeky person, and you've ever hung out with similarly geeky people, you've likely got in a who-would-win discussion involving iconic characters from science fiction, fantasy, and comics.  You know, could the U.S.S. Enterprise defeat an Imperial Star Destroyer?  Could The Hulk defeat Smaug?  The Borg vs. The Daleks?  Buffy vs. Wolverine?

I went to the University of Waterloo, so I had plenty of opportunity to participate in these arguments discussions.  This was in the nineties, a sparse time for the geekosphere compared to now, so many of these discussions were Deep Space Nine vs. Babylon 5.  Yes, that's Waterloo for you, where people argue in favour of obscure science fiction, rather than obscure bands.

I quickly realized that these hypothetical battles were meaningless, because each world in speculative fiction is built on different premises.  The creators make wild guesses educated speculation about what is possible, and that shapes the capabilities of there characters, rather than any measure of "goodness" of the characters.  So these arguments are really just childish bragging.

Of course, this is inspired by the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman movie.  I'm not really enthusiastic about it.  Partly that's because I'm just not as emotionally invested in the characters as many are. And of course, there's the question of how and why two good guys would fight.  Yes, I know they fought in The Dark Knight Returns, but that had political subtext to it; this just sounds like a big-budget version of one of those late-night geek arguments.  They've even decided to level the playing field by giving Batman a mechanized suit in the style of Iron Man a generic wealthy crime-fighting genius.  So will that let him win?  I don't know, have the writers arbitrarily decided that a near-future exoskeleton is stronger than a genetically-advanced alien?

I Don't Always Study Chromosomes, But When I Do, I Prefer Dos Equis

This week we found out that Dos Equis beer is going to be changing the "Most Interesting Man In The World" character from their ads. They're still using the same concept, but they'll have a new actor in the role. The current Most Interesting Man will get some appropriate send off, supposedly a one-way trip to Mars.

So now they're going to have to come up with a new Most Interesting Man. But in our enlightened and, some people have suggested they have a Most Interesting Woman In The World. I'll leave it to you to decide/argue whether that's a good idea or not, but either way, it brings up the interesting question of what the Most Interesting Woman would be like. After all, we don't expect women to have their own identity, never mind a complex, multifaceted identity. So there really aren't many adventuresome, hyper-talented role models for women. The Most Interesting Man seems to be inspired by Ernest Hemingway, but who would you use as the basis for the female version? Here are some ideas:

• Jane Goodall
• Dorothy Parker
• Kim Gordon
• Anaïs Nin
• Nellie Bly
• Ani DiFranco
• Hedy Lemarr
• Carrie Fisher
• Laurie Anderson
• Björk
• Hillary Clinton
• Amelia Earhart
• Yoko Ono
• Oprah Winfrey

9 Represent

You occasionally hear places described by their area codes. For instance, Toronto's satellite communities are often collectively called, "the 905." Toronto's original area code was 416, and it has since added a second one that I can't remember, but it apparently has a six in it, so Drake had decreed that henceforth, Toronto shall be known as, "The 6."

But outside of Toronto's cultural currents, the numbers don't come up much. For instance, I've lived my whole life in the 519 area, yet those digits just sit in my phone's contact list doing nothing.

Until now, that is. I've heard the evening news refer to the 519 region a few times as shorthand for Southwestern Ontario. I suspect it's just because in our world of consolidated local news, it's a convenient way of using the same report on CTV's London and Kitchener stations without anyone noticing.

But it actually makes some sense. After all, the 905 and 416 may be at each other's throats in elections, but they really have a lot in common. The 519 is really more distinct culturally and economically. Yes, I hate allying with our rivals in London (the Knights are going down in the playoffs!) But there I go: we both care about junior hockey, while the GTA shows little interest. That settles it: Shad, as the foremost hip-hop artist in the 519 region, it falls to you to popularize the region as, "The 9."

From The Past Until Completion

You may have seen this video of a group called "Orkestra Obsolete" using old instruments to play New Order's 1983 synthpop classic, "Blue Monday":

(And here's the original for comparison.)

It's all using instruments from the 1930's.  It may seem like cheating to use actual electronics, but that granddaddy of electronic instruments, the Theremin, dates back all the way to 1920.  I can't seem to find much information on this "Orkestra Obsolete," so I don't know if they're going to do more of these anachronistic covers.  I hope so; I want them to try Steampunk where they actually use steam to perform punk.

So if you could have made a pretty good approximation of 1980's electronic pop fifty years ago, I wonder what the people of the 1930's would have thought of it. Because it sounds so unlike any music of the time, I'm guessing they wouldn't have liked it. And that brings up a point I've heard people make before: like it or not, technology shapes our musical styles.  For instance, bass sounds have become more popular along with the abilities of our speakers.

So that makes me wonder: it was possible for people in the past to create modern music with what they had available, it just wasn't easy.  So just how many different styles of music might be possible, but difficult, today?

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #30

You'll see an TV entertainment show do a report on the Canadian Prime Minister visiting Washington.  But wait, the weird part is that the Prime Minister will be Justin Trudeau, and the entertainment show will be hosted by Ben Mulroney.

We Live In Cities You'll Never See On Screen

Recently, the Guelph Mercury, one of Canada's oldest newspapers, went out of print. It's still online, but losing there paper was a blow to the community, not to mention the loss of a bunch of jobs. Shortly thereafter, Postmedia, Canada's largest newspaper owner announced massive cutbacks. Publications were shut down, newsrooms were merged. Now, the London Free Press seems to be morphing into the National Post with a few pages of local news.

It can be hard to care about newspapers in our world that seems to be too connected. And after reading Christie Blanchford's coverage of the Jian Gomeshi trial, I'm really looking forward Postmedia's eventual collapse.   But even if you don't like particular papers, you have to admit that they fill a very important niche: local news.  The only other source is local TV newcasts, if your city is big enough to have one.

It's one of the weird aspects of our information society: the lack of local information. On the one hand, it's easier than ever to stay informed about what's happening world-wide. On the other, communicating and staying on touch with individuals is easy. But in between, there's an unserviced aspect of communication, one for informing yourself about your community.

Yes, there are possibilities: many neighbourhood associations have their own web pages. And a lot of communities have a social media presence. The problem is, you're reliant on other members of your community taking the initiative; we haven't reached the point where this kind of thing is expected, so it often doesn't happen, or people don't know where to find it.

Wearing The Pants In The Family

Well, I've just got to put the finishing touches on this post about the decline of Canadian print media and... wait, what's that? The Kamloops Blazers are wearing Cooperalls? Stop the presses!

If you're not familiar with the concept: in the early eighties, the Cooper sports equipment company experimented with long pants for hockey players, rather than the shorts-and-socks of tradition. They were briefly used by a few NHL teams, as well as in many minor leagues, but they fell out of favour and disappeared. (And to be clear, I now find that "Cooperall" was just one brand, and it was Kleenexed into being the name for all of the pants. It turns out the pants used in the NHL were not actually Cooperalls™.)

Cooperalls had become something of a punchline in recent years, so it was quite a shock when I was chanel-surfing and came across the Sportsnet Junior Hockey game of the week, with one of the teams in pants. I assumed that they just had weird socks that look like part of the shorts, but no, they were pants. Needing to convince myself I wasn't going crazy, I searched Twitter for "Kamloops Blazers" and found that nearly all the current tweets were commenting on the pants, with no mention of the game itself.

It turns out that this was a promotion, an eighties throwback night. You have to have respect for that kind of throwback. No cheap third jerseys or asking the audience to turn up in pastels, they went for truely retro uniforms. But what was really surprising is that people seemed supportive of it. Most of the aforementioned tweets were positive, appreciating the quirkiness and irony of it.

I found that surprising because hockey tends to be a sport that really takes itself seriously, and I would argue too serious. A sport that has some - let's face it - strange aspects could really benefit from learning to laugh at itself. It was refreshing to see people applaud instead of shouting-down a deviation from the traditional orthodoxy.

Maybe it was because this was Junior hockey. Maybe it was because it's the first time, and there'll be a different reaction if lots of teams break out the pants every season. Or it could be that Cooperalls have just receeded far enough into the rear-view mirror that they can be regarded as part of hockey tradition. Either way, I'm not expecting fans to welcome back the Fox Trax puck any time soon.

Speaking Words Of Wisdom

So I recently stumbled across the fact that both Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles covered both "Let It Be" and "Eleanor Rigby." If you'd like to hear them, um, consult this handy chart:

	Let It Be	Eleanor Rigby
Ray Charles	here	here
Aretha Franklin	here	here

I don't know, I just feel like someone should have mentioned this.  Yes, I know, you Baby Boomers were busy telling us we were lazy and should stop doing drugs and playing video games.  But if you were sitting on some intriguing musical nugget like that, you could have slipped it in there.  Say, tell us that we should get a job and be a productive member of society, like when Franklin collaborated with Duane Allman to cover The Band's "The Weight."

I guess the entire cultural heritage produced by a generation is a lot to pass on the younger folks.  Despite all of our society's celebration of the Beatles, there were still many people who didn't put two and two together and realize that Paul McCartney used to play bass for the Beatles before his solo career.  It's like, whoops, did we forget to mention that?

So now I'm wondering what we in Generation X may have forgotten to mention.  It's not necessarily weird covers necessarily, though if that's what you're looking for:

• Tori Amos covering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
• Alanis Morissette covering Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees"
• R.E.M. covering U2's "One"
• AlexisOnFire covering Midnight Oil's "The Dead Heart"

Hmm, what else.  Well, the guy from Foo Fighters was the drummer from Nirvana.  Don't fall for the conspiracy theories passed around social media - they're just trying to make fun of you.  And if you haven't heard, you should really know about Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke's fathers, just so you get the full ironic appreciation of their careers that we've been treated to.  Oh, and we're really sorry that we almost erased "Under Pressure" and "Superfreak" from the musical cannon by making half-assed samples into hits.  Check out the originals if you haven't already.

A Rare Right Turn

I'm honestly trying not to write too much about Donald Trump. I don't want to turn off readers, and I want to maintain my own sanity. But it's hard; he's such a perfect demonstration of all that's wrong with humanity. I mean, people were comparing his presidential run to that of David Duke in the eighties to demonstrate the shift in America's acceptance of extreme ideas. And the next thing you know, David Duke actually endorses Trump, and he waffles over it, and there are no consequences. It's like political gods (or devils) are toying with us.

(And I'm glad to say that Android is still interpreting my swipe of "presidential run" as "presidential ruin.")

But sometimes something comes up that I just can't ignore, like when NASCAR endorses Trump for president. That had sports journalists wondering, has a major sports organization ever endorsed a presidential contender before? It's hard to imagine, say, the NFL endorsing a candidate, if only because they rely on fans from all parts of the political spectrum. But to be clear, NASCAR itself didn't endorse Trump; the CEO of NASCAR, Brian France, merely endorsed Trump, at a rally, accompanied by several current and former drivers. It was enough that many people thought it was an official endorsement from the racing series itself. Trump himself wrongly said that the endorsement came from NASCAR itself, but on the list of Trump exaggerations, that doesn't even crack the top thousand.

At this point, I must ask you to stop and get all the "France endorses Trump" jokes out of your system.

This whole incident says a lot about the Trump phenomena and the cultural split in America. France felt comfortable endorsing him, presumably because NASCAR fandom is uniformly behind Trump, or close enough that an endorsement will do more good than harm. As I've mentioned before, NASCAR may like to portray itself as part of the sporting mainstream, but they are also willing to play right into their own stereotypes. Indeed, the organization has put considerable work into expanding outside its traditional white audience, which makes this whole thing perplexing. But that just demonstrates how Trump's support is so divorced from his actions. The campaign is entirely about attitude, so Trump's enemies seem to be the only ones concerned about his actual words.