Parlovr

Good! While the song seems to be about negotiating certain obstacles on the road to fulfillment, the video is mostly about being 30 (or 80) and still having a good time. But you can't retire your youth and then try to turn it on again when the time is right. You're not Michael Jordan. You have to stay young. Fuck it, wear a beard and wayfarers or a risky hat if it helps keep you in the mood to wig out.

Parlovr - Pen to the Paper from *safe solvent™ on Vimeo.

Proud Bastion of Stereotypes Increasingly Anti-Woman

Modern Lady - a segment on Current TV's show Infomania - talks beer commercials, the absolute best our culture has to offer in modern sexism.

Bruise Cruise: best sweet idea i've heard this week

Whatever your feelings toward these bands or ardently hip people in general, sweet idea. A three day music festival on a boat full of stinky tattooed mustaches wearing cutoffs traveling from Miami to the Bahamas in the dead of winter sounds fun any way you slice it.

Bruise Cruise Launch! from BRUISE CRUISE FEST on Vimeo.

Google a threat to Net Neutrality? (or...Fairness Raped Again. Guess who? Corporations)

Google, have you no shame? What was all that one in a million talk?

As far as I can tell, net neutrality is viewed as essential equality under law by everyone except corporations with a profit motive. Why does the FCC have to negotiate with broadband providers to define net neutrality? Incentive is everything. Google and Verizon would never advocate policy that doesn't tighten their grip on power and market share.

from PC World: "In addition to the 'public Internet,' which is basically what you're enjoying right now, Verizon wants the right to maintain a private Internet, on which companies can pay for fast delivery of traffic."

Money always gets the last word. Isn't this straight Big Money corporate influence laying wood to fairness?

Google: Don't Be Evil from MoveOn.org Official Channel on Vimeo.

Might common folk benefit? Perhaps..........Reaganomics 2.0, anyone? A data trickle down effect, I can see it now! Data streaming efficiently and speedily to wealthy corporations who then wield that bandwidth to spur economic growth that enables universal wi-fi for every American citizen and small business (albeit, the slow "public" internet).

I'm skeptical. The whole thing smells like tax cuts for the rich.

Google's public position mentions compromise. What is there to compromise? we're talking about net neutrality. Net Neutrality. My small human brain might not get it. What am I missing?

Unstaged

If the best thing to come from the American Express/Arcade Fire/Terry Gilliam/MSG quadfecta (with Youtube and Vevo, a sextecta) turns out to be this Behind the Scenes video, then I'm sold. More sponsored YouTube events pairing music and video. Dig Gilliam as the likable, believable host and narrator.


Overall the event seems to have been successful and replicable.

You watch it live (on Youtube) or catch it later (on YouTube), just like you'd use a DVR (but embeddable and social-media-distribution-ready). And you get "American Express Presents", tastefully. The rest is the filmmaker and the band doing their things, but together and seemingly unfettered by instructions.

this here video, but one of many from the night, has 68,000 views after less than a week. it'll be on the internet forever. Our kids are going to be slurping that American Express sponsorship, man. How do you measure the worth of The Sponsorship that does not die associated with a band people already consider classic? That has got to be some ROI, it gosta. At least until someone purges the internet.

speaking of the power of youtube........Youtube and Vevo kinda just raspberried MTV. A liscensing dispute between Vevo and MTV ended with Universal Music Group yanking its artists (Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Kanye) from all MTV sites. Basically Vevo wants to "power videos we have under license" as a syndication partner to every major outlet that wants to feature music videos online. Sounds like they are asking for a lot until you consider the logic of UMG (who partnered with Google/YouTube to launch Vevo):

"In less than 8 months since its launch, Vevo has already become the web's #1 rated video network with over 49 million unique visitors monthly, dramatically eclipsing those on MTV's online properties, while attracting scores of major advertisers and tens of millions in advertising dollars."

MTV Networks president Van Toffler in regard to competing online with Vevo: "We haven’t really unlocked the great visual history we have in music across our channels around the globe, which we’re slowly going to do." Key word here is slowly.

"You got a real good attitude."

the big news here is that a guy from brooklyn made a cool song that could also be described as hip. but also the video...

Twin Shadow 'Slow' (NSFW) from Twin Shadow on Vimeo.

Fader tells me the video was modeled after these banned-from-TV Calvin Klein ads. I remember remembering these ads, but watching this now I'm sure I had never actually seen them. The voice of the genius behind the camera would have stayed with me.