The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'avant-garde'

2002/3/27

Today's Onion: Hey, Everybody, we'll stop Banker Mudge from tearing down our clubhouse by putting on an avant-garde show:

Who will write this play, you ask? None other than yours truly, Mickey McCune, natch! Aw, don't worry, I've seen lots of these kind of shows—cabaret, poetry recitals, performance art, you name it. It'll be a cinch! I think I'll call my work Meat Play . It will be the story of the aforementioned fetus, who survives a premature birth and eventually ascends to the throne of an obscure Eastern European kingdom. There will be a waltzing skeleton, a murderous clown, an enormously fat industrialist who sits atop a large glass toilet and defecates money, and a lecherous bishop who covets his own sister but can't act on his impulses because he's buried up to his chest in dirt. Ain't that a peach?

And then there's also "Man Bitten By Radioactive Sloth Does The Lying-Around-All-Day Of 10 Normal Men":

CENTRAL CITY—Laboratory assistant Brent Barker, bitten by a radioactive sloth last week in a freak lab accident, now possesses the relative loafing powers of 10 men. "Could someone pass me some more crackers?" asked the media-dubbed "Crimson Lump," speaking from his titanium sofa, the only known object that can withstand his superhuman lethargy. "I can't reach them from here." Scientists are likewise baffled at Barker's uncanny ability to remain motionless while watching amounts of television that would kill an ordinary mortal.

all-american antonin artaud avant-garde sloths the onion theatre theatre of cruelty usa 0

2001/4/15

The future is already here: it's just not evenly distributed: Companies have been hiring the service of cool hunters , who are sort of like upmarket yuppie anthropologists, to tell them what the trendy urban hipsters are doing, thinking and identifying with; the theory being that the twitchily hip urban fads of today will be the next big hit of tomorrow's mainstream; a view Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point put forward.

When not receiving facials or having their toes dipped in Bollinger Grande Cuvée, trendsetting teens claim to be experimenting with digital filmmaking, vintage computers and "geometric prints from the '60s and '70s." Mainstream teens say they're having sex, "rolling up my jeans" and "going to college." Asked about the "newest thing your friends are doing," the mainstreamers, in a sudden burst of Eisenhower-era conformity retrograde even by their standards, cited "getting married," "working on cars" and "going to nudie bars." Trendier types mentioned "freestyling" and "drunk bowling."

The cool-hunting consultancies, of course, charge hefty fees for these vital tips. (An annual subscription to the L Report will set you back $30k.) Mind you, they're now discovering a corollary to the Tipping Point hypothesis; namely, that most cutting-edge trends are too rarefied to trickle down to suburban mainstream consumers to the point of being marketable; leading to missteps such as marketing guarana-laced soft drinks and male makeup kits to the Wal-Mart crowd, with predictably underwhelming results. (via rebecca's pocket)

anthropology avant-garde cool cool hunters culture fashion hipsters mainstream marketing society trends 0

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