shrapnel

OK, if it’s starting to feel like a phantom limb, it’s time to turn it off for a while.

In certain circles, phantom vibrations are a point of pride.

“Of course I get them,” said Fred Wilson, a managing partner of Union Square Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York. “I’ve been getting them for over 10 years since I started with the pager-style BlackBerry.”

I wish North America looked as alien.

one of the war cries of the Russian Futurists was The War of the Worlds‘ Martian roar ‘ULL-AA’, which would in 1919 provide the title for one of Viktor Shklovsky’s manifestos for the alienation effect, ‘Ullya, Ullya, Martians’. In order to truly estrange, to provide the distance from everyday life’s stock responses and learned indifference that, for Shklovsky, is the key element in great art (be it Tolstoy or the circus), the alienation effect is taken literally to mean the visitation by the alien nation. Shklovsky writes of an avant-garde work being ‘worthy of my brothers, the Martians’. This is what much of the Russian Avant-Garde saw themselves as. Like Tatlin’s Third International Tower, whose iron legs and perpetual motion are akin to the Martians’ walking tripods, this was something as fearsome, uncanny and technologically terrifying as the alien invasion, and intended to be every bit as threatening to existing society.

(Via Metafilter.)

 

Apparently boomers’ failing taste buds are making American food spicier.

ANYONE WHO HAS browsed a supermarket in the last few years can’t help but notice the shelves are practically bursting into flames. Spicy Guacamole Pringles. Tyson Hot ‘n’ Spicy Buffalo Style Chicken Chunks. Mo Hotta Mo Betta Cayenne Garlic Hot Sauce.

Restaurants are no different. McDonald’s has its Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap; Friday’s has its Wicked Wings. The spice-driven cooking of India, Thailand, and Sichuan China is responsible for a growing percentage of American takeout dollars every year. It’s clear that Americans have developed an addiction to food with sinus-clearing pizzazz.

Why is hot so hot? The conventional explanation is that the nation has an increasingly adventurous palate. Immigration and prosperity have made Americans more sophisticated eaters, pushing wasabi peas into the mainstream, along with chili-Thai lime cashews, cayenne chocolate bars, and other high-octane combinations.

But some food scientists and market researchers think there is a more surprising reason for the broad nationwide shift toward bolder flavors: The baby boomers, that huge, youth-chasing, all-important demographic, are getting old. As they age, they are losing their ability to taste – and turning to spicier, higher-flavor foods to overcome their dulled senses.

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Vanity Fair looks at Lou Pearlman, the man behind such bands as Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync. And also blimp entrepreneur, airline tycoon and con man.

The crowds began gathering outside Orlando’s Church Street Station complex early on a sweltering June morning, waiting in line to wander through the abandoned offices of the unlikely multi-millionaire who had transformed this central Florida city into a music-industry mecca. Lou Pearlman, the rotund impresario who created the Backstreet Boys and ‘NSync and guided the early recording careers of Justin Timberlake and scores of other young singers, had been an international celebrity, a popular, easygoing local businessman known as “Big Poppa.” In his heyday, 5 to 10 years ago, he was profiled on 60 Minutes II and 20/20 and produced a hit ABC/MTV series, Making the Band.

Pearlman was long gone now, vanished, one step ahead of the F.B.I. and investigators from the state of Florida, who had rocked Orlando months before by accusing him of being a con man. Gone too were Justin and JC and Kevin and all the other young singers he had made into stars. What remained of Pearlman’s empire, mostly memorabilia and office furniture, was to be auctioned later that day. Up in his gaudy third-floor corner office, with its rust-colored shag carpet and walls lined with gold and platinum records, would-be bidders poked into his cabinets and rifled through his desk drawers; the only secret they uncovered, alas, was Pearlman’s passion for breath mints. At the back, a cavernous storeroom was stacked with framed posters of his bands.

Most of those milling about Pearlman’s offices had scant idea what he had done wrong, much less where he had fled to. Some said Israel, or Germany, or Ireland, or Belarus. He had left the country last January, just days before the state sued him, alleging that he had bilked nearly 2,000 investors, many of them elderly Florida retirees, out of more than $317 million in a Ponzi scheme lasting at least 15 years. A dozen banks also sued for more than $130 million in back loans. Later the indictment would come. Big Poppa, it turned out, had been an accomplished swindler long before he formed his first band. His were scams of jaw-dropping audacity. Pearlman’s largest company, a colossus he boasted was bringing in $80 million a year, was … well, not. For years his investors, starry-eyed after rubbing elbows with ‘NSync and the Backstreet Boys, never questioned his promises of forthcoming riches. When they finally did, he fought back with lawsuits, forged documents, and fictitious financial statements. When the truth began to come out, he ran.

Worth1000.com had another redo-the-classics competition.

I can’t wait for the film version of Sweeney Todd.
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Evolution of a hip, ironic catchphrase (cartoon):

Wired talks to the horny housewives of erotic text messaging:

I thought erotic texting was like phone sex: You answer the phone and have a conversation with the client, trying to give him his money’s worth while keeping him on the phone long enough to make your employer happy.

But with text, it’s not a one-on-one relationship between client and provider. A whole group of text actresses respond to a single client, and each text actress responds to many clients in any given minute.

It’s like that game where everyone tells a story. You start telling it and stop midway and then someone else picks it up,” she says.

The messages come in to a group queue, where a text actress responds; it’s all done through the computer and the internet on the provider side, not mobile devices. When the client replies, a different woman might respond to it. A few minutes might pass and several messages might be exchanged before the same actress answers the same client’s text.

You have to follow the flow of the story and continue where they left off,” says GiGi.

This should be on, well, The Office.

See also outsourcing your life.

Mexico city:

Wired interviews the depraved geniuses behind Robot Chicken.

Emperor Palpatine sits in his office, feet on his desk, telling his how-I-whupped-Yoda’s-ass-in-the-Senate story (again) to a couple of cronies. The phone rings. It’s Darth Vader — calling collect. “Vader! How’s my favorite Sith?” Then, after listening for a few beats, the prune-faced politician slams a tiny plastic fist on his desk in rage. “Whaddya mean they blew up the Death Star?” He unleashes a flurry of V-chipped expletives. “That thing wasn’t even fully paid off yet! Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my credit?” The conversation ends with a sheepish Palpatine grumbling, “I love you, too,” before hanging up the phone.

That scene is just one nugget of Robot Chicken, the Adult Swim network’s hit series that’s about as far, far away from mainstream TV as you can get. The show’s 15-minute episodes are packed with silly superhero riffs and abundant fart jokes acted out by posable action figures. Yet since its debut in 2005, Chicken has helped the cable channel set ratings records and has enjoyed brisk DVD sales. When the Palpatine snippet found its way onto YouTube last year, it generated more than a million views, creating a flock of new fans — and eventually hatching a 30-minute Robot Chicken: Star Wars TV special.

If you haven’t seen Robot Chicken yet, here’s a teaser featuring the Charlie Brown cast: