Photos from homeboy Jordan Todd’s recent trip to Tokyo. Check out more on his superb flickr.

As a medium, the gentlemen’s magazine reached its creative and productive peak sometime in the mid ’60s. Following the success of Playboy, magazine racks were flooded with a torrent of competitors and rip-offs, each struggling to define their own niche within an emerging revaluation of masculinity. Many of the magazines that were published during this period stuck to printing nudes with a bit of filler copy, while others were more ambitious in their efforts to delineate the transformative nature of the swinging sixties’ ‘Bachelor’s Paradise’.

The ‘Bachelor’s Paradise’ – an imagined and idealized male lifestyle, was a byproduct of post-war consumer culture’s coalescence with the sexual revolution. The new man of the sixties, as first outlined by Playboy, was a man of acquisition and action that eschewed the role of nuclear family breadwinner in favour of fine things, fine women and fun.

But the glut of magazines that peddled the ‘Bachelor’s Paradise’ lifestyle were short on budget and savvy, so they were positioned a bit lower down the brow from Hef’s Grotto, filling all the cracks that were neglected by established gentlemen’s magazines. They offered a saucy alternative to Playboy’s photography and GQ’s content with a simple editorial formula: soft porn,  lurid journalism on nefarious topics, how-to-get-laid guides, short fiction and the odd tale of exotic adventure. Many of the mags only lasted a few issues and any and all profits were most likely spent by the the fly-by-night publishers on hooch and a one way plane ticket out of town.

Bizarre – The Cameraman comes in for his shot (1967):

But the market conditions that allowed these magazines to flourish were short lived. Eventually more explicit outfits like Hustler came along and printed hardcore, vaginal-centric content with crude commentary and changed the game forever. The demise of the breast-laden lifestyle mag soon followed, giving way to more advertising-friendly, consumerist publications. To put it in architectural terms: If the ‘Bachelor’s Paradise’ was a string of slummy cabanas on a relatively unknown, yet happening beach, it was indiscriminately bulldozed to make way for a concrete and stucco corporate resort.

This vacated cultural real-estate is now inhabited by the likes of Maxim, FHM, and Loaded, but only in name. The nudity is gone, as is the focus on lifestyle. In its place is basically a buyer’s guide with some photoshopped swimsuit models. The publishers of these magazines continue to use aspirational masculinity as a marketing vehicle, but there is no philosophy to it – no reason, just gadgetry and ‘awesome stuff’.

Ironically, the true inheritors of the ‘Bachelor’s Paradise’ editorial legacy are publications like Vice Magazine, which produce similar content and photography for a gender-neutral audience, albiet under the pretense of artifice.

Vice – Shot by Kern (February 2010):

Some of these are available for purchase over here.

After suffering another blow from the velvet gloves of the Obama administration, it may appear that good old-fashioned dog-eat-dog capitalism is down and out. But old-school tycoonery can claim at one small victory: Lord Conrad Black is back. Well, sort of. The man who in 2005 called himself a “corporate-governance counterterrorist” was yesterday swarmed by the paparazzi after exiting out the back door of Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, en route to his ocean side mansion in Palm Beach.

The former owner of the Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post and countless Canadian dailies, was released yesterday following the US supreme court’s revaluation of “honest services” law. Their verdict: the term “honest” was too vague to keep Black behind bars.

But this was not the lord of yore. Gone are the $24,950 cocktail bills, the Kissinger-grade entourage and the Rolls Royce. What was seen sitting in the back of a blacked-out SUV was a magnate stripped down to sweatpants and a T-shirt, a man whose fortunes so diminished that he had to rely on a friend to pick up the $2m bail tab. While Black is by no means fully vindicated, his situation is looking far better than it has in recent months. But if indeed he does end up a free man in the near future, where on earth will he go?

A Canadian who renounced his citizenship so he could take up British peerage only to be imprisoned in the United States, Black has become somewhat of a persona non grata across the globe. Now a convicted felon without a passport or valid identification save for a mug not even a goldfish could forget, the legalities of his citizenship remain unclear. Whatever his final destination, there is already a palpable shift in opinion concerning the possibility of his return. The Wall Street Journal was the first in line to welcome the lord back into the fold, printing an apology for any previous criticisms.

The odds are he will attempt to reclaim his Canadian citizenship, and if the legal system permits, he will almost certainly be allowed to return there. The country Black once described as a “third world dump run by raving socialists” now has a prime minister more in tune with Black’s politics.

During his tenure in the Florida penal system, Black spent much ink penning love letters to Stephen Harper, fawning over their shared love for Israel and overt displays of nationalism. And while it baffles the mind to consider what use a former newspaper magnate would be to anyone in this day and age, perhaps Black will find a comfy niche as a PR man for Canada’s nascent Christian movement.

Here in Canada’s British Columbia, two major papers that Black once owned (the Vancouver Sun and the Province) were recently dragged out of bankruptcy and resuscitated under the newly minted “Postmedia” brand, no pun intended I’m sure. The name is said to reflect “both where we have been and where we are going”. A fitting motto for Black’s return to Canadian society. And with his new comrades in parliament gearing up for a culture war against the forces of liberalism that Black railed against for much of his adult life, it looks as if he might be able to resume various campaigns which he had left off.

Perhaps Canadians and all other concerned observers should take this opportunity to glean a bit of wisdom from the words of George W Bush, the man who refused to give Black a pardon when he had the opportunity. “Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … you can’t get fooled again.”

(originally published @ The Guardian)

Update: Black likely stuck in the US

BONUS: Some choice Conrad Black quotes:

“My experience with journalists authorizes me to record that a very large number of them are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, intellectually dishonest, and inadequately supervised. The ‘profession’ is heavily cluttered with abrasive youngsters who substitute ‘commitment’ for insight, and to a lesser extent, with aged hacks toiling through a miasma of mounting decrepitude. Alcoholism is endemic in both groups.”

“I have no doubt that mothers in America use my name to frighten their children into finishing their vegetables.”

“The destructive fixation of the envious English-Canadian mind requires that the highest, happiest most agile flyers be laid low. [It is] a sadistic desire corroded by soul-destroying envy, to intimidate all those who might aspire to anything the slightest exceptional.”

Now that Vampire Weekend is being sued by the woman who appears on their “iconic” (read: Futura/Polaroid/Polo) album cover, they will no doubt need to either shell out millions of dollars or perhaps replace the image. Here are 17 logical alternatives:

All images via Dubwise Version

It must have seemed such a brilliant idea at the time. Round up the superstars, put them in a bit of cinema courtesy of Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu, and score a viral coup against their age-old rival—and official World Cup sponsor—Adidas.

When it first hit the tube-waves, Nike’s “Write the Future” commercial was promptly hailed as a masterpiece and a stroke of advertising genius. Within the first week of its release, the three-minute spot broke previous viral records with an unprecedented 7.8 million views, and it seemed Nike had perfected the art of ambush marketing. Aside from being visually compelling, the ad was successful because it provided an aspirational narrative every spectator could relate to—the idea that the only thing separating us bean-eating plebs from heroism and fame are those rare moments where an individual wills themselves into history.

But what a difference three weeks makes. With the semifinals afoot and millions of embittered fans looking for someone to blame, a curious backlash has begun and the verdict is in: Nike’s Write the Future campaign is officially cursed. Not only have all the superstars featured in the three-minute spot been shamefully ejected from the tournament, but inopportunely cast Roger Federer also suffered a confounding loss at Wimbledon that many are accrediting to the curse.

Worse yet, for Nike stockholders at least, Adidas has rallied from behind to claim the largest share of World Cup-associated buzz. It’s become such a intriguing and publicized debacle that Write the Future is likely to go down as the most shocking reversal of advertising fortunes since Pepsi set Michael Jackson’s hair on fire.

But is it a curse for the ages? Perhaps not. Nike sponsors the Netherlands, so as long as they win the cup it will be difficult to prove that there exists a supernatural connection between the swoosh and abysmal failure.

What the campaign is more indicative of is that American advertisers still don’t fully understand the nature of the World Cup. The agency that produced the spot, Oregon-based Wieden + Kennedy, has found plenty of success in hyping up the likes of Rooney and Ronaldo, but the World Cup is a far different brand of beast than your typical bout of idol worship.

If this year’s tournament has proved anything, it’s that the efforts of the most publicized players are futile when they come up against a team that can play with a bit of cohesion. By producing an advert that focused solely on the actions of a few celebs, Nike tempted fate and is being accordingly punished.

But even more hazardous was in how Nike tested the attention spans and emotional commitment of its audience. Because Write the Future was so well-executed, and because it became so popular so quickly, it effectively functioned as an inspiring prelude to the kickoff. And when that decisive moment came for Rooney (or Ronaldo, Ribéry, Cannavaro, et al) and they crumpled exactly as they had done in Nike’s vision, the entire meaning of the ad shifted away from “just do it” and toward a prognostication of doom.

Rather than a storybook ending for any one of Nike’s heroes, what we have here is a case study of what happens when hype goes terribly awry. It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to capitalize on star power during the World Cup, proving that Adidas was correct to pick Snoop Dogg and Han Solo for spokesmen, as they have absolutely no chance of mucking it up and disappointing prospective cleat consumers.

BONUS: Trevor Brooking for Atari.

(originally published @ The Guardian on July 5th)

New video for Babe Rainbow. A collaboration between myself, Alex Kurina and Kent Hugo.

Rabid Dogs (Bava/1974)

Here’s part 1/10 (all available on the tube) of one the most under-appreciated films of all time. Directed by Mario Bava, stylistic godfather of Tarantino and the slasher flick, Rabid Dogs sat in distribution limbo for twenty years after one of the film’s financiers died and Bava’s production company went bankrupt.

The plot is as such:

“Following a bungled robbery, three violent criminals take a young woman, a middle-aged man, and a child hostage and force them to drive them outside Rome to help them make a clean getaway.”

The story unfolds in real time, primarily within the confines of a Fiat, all set to the relentless score of Stelvio Cipriani, who now composes for the Pope.

Just returned to Canada after a month in Europe. Thanks for all the memories, and did I miss anything? Who won the Stanley Cup?

Since the days of pulp paperbacks, the French Minitel and beyond, the pornography industry has developed in unison with media innovation. Porn producers backed VHS in the video wars of the 80s, and in the 90s they blessed the world’s lonely motel rooms with pay-per-view. They then carried the internet on their sweaty backs until every man, woman and child had unlimited access to as much porn as they could ever want.

But the internet has proven to be the porn industry’s very own Judas goat. Since social networking surpassed porn as the web’s premier draw in 2008, the proliferation of amateur content and “tube” sites offering user-uploaded videos has crippled DVD sales and online subscriptions. Worse yet, Apple has in effect hogtied further innovation by blocking porn apps from the iPhone and iPad, and has gone so far as to ban unnecessary instances of the female nipple. Last week Steve Jobs, nowapparently the Franklin D Roosevelt of consumer technocracy, hinted at his company’s broader vision by stating that the iPad will offer its users“freedom from porn”.

With parasitic pirates on one side and anti-porn iconoclasts on the other, just how rough is it out there for adult entertainment professionals? Well, you know the industry is in a tight spot when it starts releasing heartfelt pleas from Ron Jeremy intended to appeal to his audience’s moral fibre.

After years of pushing hardcore to its physical and ethical limits, all the sordid, comic and absurd possibilities of human intercourse have been thoroughly exhausted. And like any pop-culture fin de siecle, porn’s lustre of excess has faded into something entirely banal. A sneaky glance at Pornhub, the leading tube site that currently gets more traffic than CNN, reveals a backlog of neatly categorised niche fetishes that would take years to consume, with new videos being uploaded on the hour.

While the hardcore wing of the porno-industrial complex may have entered into unavoidable decline, softcore television programmingcontinues to flourish. What this suggests is that contrary to what Jeremy says, pornography’s dilemma is one of content, rather than copyright.

In order for porn to move into the 21st century, the productions should be made to appeal to a wider audience and be able to hold a viewer’s attention longer than say, two and half minutes. The most obvious move for the modern pornographer would be to create content aimed specifically at women, who have until recently been all but ignored. Indeed, many women enjoy what’s currently available, but the vast majority of today’s porn is still produced only with male tastes in mind. And though there is no shortage of diversity in terms of the sex acts that appear on screen, racial and gender stereotypes continue to be encouraged by the industry’s status quo, allowing porn to remain one of the only mediums where racism and misogyny are still openly tolerated.

However, the incentive for change is not likely to come from within. The industry’s reaction to Jobs’s crusade and the rise of tube sites has been to push for more technological development, specifically effects-drivenmegaproductions a la Avatar. Which is great, if you’re into that sort of thing. But for anyone interested in the development of new or less caustic forms of adult entertainment, the government of Canada may prove to be a more effective catalyst than the advent of giant 3-D genitals.

In April it was announced that the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission approved the licensing of Canada’s first porn channel. Known as “Vanessa”, it will begin to air in October and will be required to adhere to Canadian content regulations, which mandate that programmes featured on the channel include “equitable portrayals” of the sexes and uniquely Canadian themes and settings. If it proves to be profitable, Vanessa could set the tone for the production of more culturally relevant and socially progressive pornography. If it’s a flop, at least anyone out there with a Canada fetish will no longer have to subsist on decades-old Kids in the Hall skits.

(originally published @ guardian.co.uk)

Cluster: The Nomadic City Populates the Street

“Where does the street as ‘thoroughfare’ end and the city begin?”

This question is asked by many – in these times of ‘illegal’ migrants, of street vendors seen to disrupt traffic flows and “legitimate” pedestrians, and the zeal for “policy advice, participatory planning and public consultations” and attempts to soften the hard edge of Master Plans – but not addressing the issue of property. These are also times the endorsement of the high art as a property circuit now seeks the ‘street as ritual’ disciplined into safe ‘heritage zones’². Are these pointers of an implicit ‘fear of the street’ depoliticizing our conception of urban space? Does asking this question, and drawing from Bromley³, reinforce the discipline and violence of the Grid and the Rule of Law? Or, is there a need to reject the bifurcation between the Street and City, and with it, a view that the city is necessarily ’striated’4 whose singular forms property in land and commodity long been naturalized? Perhaps we should locate such questions and their associated interventions as a result of the fear of the undisciplined city, the complexity and fluidity of which subverts easy political and economic control….

Practical Advice From Someone Who’s Lived in a Car Long-Term

Locations:

• Most Wal-Marts let you park overnight for free
• Rest stops can be good, especially if there is security provided
• Most National Forests (grasslands, etc.) and Bureau of Land Management properties allow free camping for up to 2 weeks (but no one actually checks..)
• Church parking lots are usually good
• Some hotels, especially along the interstate, won’t notice if you park overnight. However, some will kick you out at 3 am so it’s a craps shoot.
• Find a place at least an hour before sundown so you’re not driving around at night
• Sleeping in nicer residential neighborhoods will get the cops called on you. Sleeping in bad residential neighborhoods will get you robbed.
• Bum a place from friends. Join Couchsurfing.org and set your status to “Traveling at the moment.”

The Oil Drum: Is Fixing Zoning Laws Part of the Solution?

In the United States, the primary type of zoning is Euclidean. With this type of zoning, different land uses are segregated by area — industrial is separate from commercial, which is in turn separate from residential multifamily, which is in turn separate from residential-single family. There are variations on this, but the net effect is to require workers to drive considerable distances to their workplaces, and also to require consumers to drive long distances to places where they purchase goods (like food and clothing) and services (like medical care and piano lessons). Zoning can sometimes make it hard for less-affluent family members to find housing near richer family members, because lower income housing (such as multi-family apartments) tends not to be available nearby. When new low priced homes are needed, agricultural land is frequently rezoned for single-family homes, contributing to sprawl, and giving farmers an incentive to sell their land, rather than to continue to farm.

Bonus!

The Guardian: Growing stocks of unsold cars around the world

Associated Press: Motor City may provide model for urban agriculture

Ed Ruscha

MIA‘s new video Born Free, which presumably takes its title from article 1 of the UN’s universal declaration of human rights, is a kick to the gut or a wink and a nudge depending on how you look at it.

Directed by Romain Gavras, son of Constantinos, Born Free takes place in an alternate reality where gingers, rather than Mexicans, are a persecuted ethnic minority. Shot in the same style of his last video Stress, Gavras’s lens follows a gang of American paramilitary thugs as they cruise through a desolate cityscape and round up renegade gingers. We follow their bus into the desert, where the gingers are then executed and bombed for sport. The video ends abruptly at the 9:06 mark, barely qualifying it for short film status.

Equal parts Punishment Park and South Park, with references to the IRA, the PLA and a curly haired young boy in place of Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Born Free serves up a dog’s breakfast of subaltern subtext. It makes a point of pointing out the obvious – that genocide exists, violent oppression remains commonplace and the United States is still leading the world through military force.

Perhaps this is Gavras rebranding his father’s trademark style of cinematic journalism for a new generation in a format fit for a tube ride. But whatever the intent, Born Free’s indirect commentary is much more powerful: that we have become so numb to the imagery of political violence that genocide can now be parodied in order to promote a pop record.

However, one thing that video gets right is that by using gingers as a proxy for anyone who has felt the brunt of a jackboot, the viewer is expected to empathise with the victim, rather than the aggressor.

This sits in stark contrast the bulk of recent films on the subject of the Afghan and Iraq wars, films such as The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Green Zone and many others that almost entirely focus on the psychological experiences of military personnel. Rarely do we ever catch a glimpse of the locals, whom we are supposed to be helping, unless they are being blown up or used as plot devices to heighten the suspense. Even Steven Spielgerg’s current television series, The Pacific, can be read as an attempt to circumvent the complexities of Iraq and Afghanistan in favour of an emotional portrait of the American soldier at a time where there was no confusion as to who the enemy was.

But our current situation is of course, nightmarishly convoluted. One day we hear of soldiers gunning down pregnant women, the next we are told that we’ll have to bribe the enemy in order to ensure success. Meanwhile, certain politicians and pundits are trying their hardest to invent new enemies and construct new rationales for more wars, even though we have yet to figure out how to discern between friend and foe in the wars we’re already fighting.

And so it seems that the source of western audiences’ apathy may not be desensitisation, but narrative poverty. Those charged with the responsibility of making sense of Iraq and Afghanistan have become too concerned with telling our side of the story.

If anything good is to come of these disastrous adventures, it will come from our ability to understand those whose lives have been affected the most – the faceless individuals who until now, have merely functioned as background extras in the west’s failed attempt to produce a sequel to the cold war.

(originally published @ The Guardian on May 1st)

BONUS: 3 choice cuts of political cinema

The Battle of Algiers

“Z”

Gomorra

“A Day of Cool Man Life” was produced by Suki Jarashi, a student at the Japanese Institute of Arts and Sciences. The video demonstrates the utility and benefits of a handheld device that Suki designed – a phone with a physical presence that far surpasses your phone’s vibrate function. Like any helpful girlfriend, it wakes you up with a gentle nudge, helps you find your way to work…and exhibits perceivable suffering when its, em, batteries run low.

What I found so interesting about the video, and Suki’s device, is that it’s another baby-step toward realizing a sophisticated transhuman relationship. If you recall, last year a Japanese man by the pseudonym of Sal 9000, married his in-game girlfriend, Nene Agasaki:

No doubt, a merger of a virtual partners such as those featured in “Love Plus”, with something similar to Suki’s device will be a natural progression. As per my own experience, I can see certain benefits in this sort of unholy union – rarely do I ever wake up to my iPhone alarm, usually I just turn it off, throw it across the room and sleep in, missing whatever important appointments (none) I had that day. But if I had a pocket boo, lovingly nudging me awake, I might be a bit more punctual in my day to day routine. Now watch this documentary film, “Guys and Dolls”, and imagine all of the amazing/depressing possibilities transhuman relationships will soon allow for: