There is perhaps no greater shared universal image of the American experience than the ones created by Norman Rockwell for the The Saturday Evening Post. While debates over whether Rockwell was an illustrator or an actual ‘artist,’ have sometimes led to an under appreciation of his work by the high-brow, critical circles of the art intelligentsia, one thing is undeniable: his impact on the American imagination.

On this her 232nd day of existence as a democracy, where 200 years ago to the day of the ending of slavery in our borders– a son of a Kenyan man and a white American women accepted the nomination to the Democratic party’s candidacy for the presidency, she has come a long way with far more to go.

The first 232 years have been mired by a pink elephant, what some have called her greatest sin: race. (Or more precisely the social ramifications of it.) Rockwell was no stranger to this, though. He understood race’s largely untold story in the American experience. He both understood the picturesque and tranquil, that of mom’s beautifully roasted bird gracing the dinner table, to the hard-fought and sacrificed for, freedoms. The ones that gave all of us as Americans the opportunity to choose our own path as individuals and minority groupings, no barriers. (In theory.) And despite the levels of unchecked institutional disadvantages, despite the feelings and attitudes of some, if this election cycle, where a woman and a ‘black’ man (two of the protected class) led an extraordinary run to the nomination and America learned to talk about race and gender in just a bit more nuanced way, is any indication, she is getting closer and closer to actual, personal freedom.

Freedom, it is the trait we attempt to sell overseas. It is perhaps our greatest export (as seen through our popular culture), an amorphous thing, with ironically great personal tangibility. And while we lose parts of it through the actions of corporations interested in preserving their own ‘rights’ over the individual’s, or the state, in the interest of our ‘protection’ via FISA and the Patriot Act, we (the citizens) still hold the power, we possess recourse. That is why even though, she treats people wrong, she is so easy to love. Here (unlike most places) we still stand a shot. And while that is true for much of the Western world, it seems that here we are constantly trying to perfect ‘freedom,’ (hence: the protests, debates, social uprisings, etc.) with each passing generation becoming better than the last. Today Design Observer looks at the upcoming Rockwell show at Florida International University, where the college has commissioned artists to craft works inspired by Rockwell’s ‘Four Freedoms’. Here’s part of the post:

During the summer of 1942, the American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell embarked on a series of paintings that would come to be known as “The Four Freedoms.” Inspired by an impassioned speech President Roosevelt had made a year earlier, this quartet of images — freedom from want, from fear, freedom of speech and of worship — were published in The Saturday Evening Post the following winter, and remain among Rockwell’s most celebrated works. They were also highly effective as a means of social impact. The Office of War Information distributed thousands as posters, and a 16-city tour of the paintings was seen by 1.2 million people, raising over $130 million dollars in war bonds. Writing in The New Yorker a few years later, one critic noted that as a series, these paintings were received by the American public with more enthusiasm, perhaps, than any other paintings in the history of American art.

Check Design Observer’s selection of works from the show [Here]

Design Observer’s full post [Here]

Rockwell’s ‘Southern Justice’ [Here]

I am currently listening to The Wire… and all the pieces that matter, a soundtrack based on the HBO original series on the sociological underpinnings of urban blight. The soundtrack, just as you would expect, is authentic to Baltimore and the sounds of the series. Featuring local rappers and an appearance by Masta Ace, interspersed with tracks from Tom Waits and The Neville Brothers along with snippets of memorable dialogue and scores made specifically for the show, it is worth a listen, you will without a doubt feel the grit and get a taste of the city.

Jay Z once spit ‘what more can I say?‘. That’s kind of how I feel here. In November of 1993 I knew not much about hip-hop history, and had no real perspective being in elementary school, but I was beginning to listen already–influenced by The Box (now in the UK), BET Rap City and most importantly older heads from around the way and school. It is weird to look back and see that time now, documented.

I just scanned this in. It comes from a stack of old The Source Magazines my friend ‘kicked down’ to me a while back. It’s a review of Blackmoon’s seminal ‘Enta Da Stage‘, an album that traces the beginning of (the now pejorative) ‘backpack rap’ for me and many of my closest friends. There are even lines by Buckshot that reference skateboarding and in at least one video treatment, he in fact, wears a book bag.

What’s particularly amazing, looking back, is that The Source was always getting it right while being what we call ’shady with it.’ They held back the ‘classic’ five mic belt from Blackmoon, instead handing them four–which many a classic hip-hop album has received from them. If you look, just below Blackmoon’s review is one of of Heiro’s own, Casual, who also dropped a classic that year, also garnering four mics.

If you go back through your The Source stacks (if so fortunate) you will see this pattern: garbage got garbage, a great record got its due, but almost no one was given the classic ‘five mics’, outright. It was earned. The last person was Biggie for ‘Life After Death’ and that was done so, posthumously. (Before that was Nas’ Illmatic.) There was a moment when hip-hop journalism mattered and held itself to an extraordinarily high-standard. Let’s hope that somewhere along the way as it has been watered-down, someone finds it in a full and consistent way again.

Larger scan [here]

When I was little I used to build model airplanes, it is probably why I have a love for the technical. I would read about aircraft and then go to the hobby store and discern between thee or four models of the same jet, based on color scheme and the bases they came from–their decals meaning more to me than to others, I think. (I always opted for the ones that came from the Western bases and the Pacific Rim where I grew up. And yeah, I was nerdy enough to know how to tell.) It was important for me to always get the F-4 from Clark with the ‘PN’ (for Philippines)* on it, because at some point, I was probably hearing the actual version of that plane or watching it, or touching it during air show season, or milling around at the base exchange with one of its pilots in my presence.

I grew out of model planes, sadly. Where they once used to hang from my ceiling with clear fishing line; years upon years later, I have no idea where any of them even went. Where hours of inhaling glue fumes, sanding down pieces and my dad helping me replicate NATO region specific camo patterns with spray paint, Testor’s model paint, my Jane’s (the most important reference site you most likely never heard of) defense books and detail brushes, now disappear into the ether. What I have is memories, now. Memories of me going to the hobby store or the toy store and buying these intricately detailed models, with their boxes so well chronicling the aircraft’s history, and getting back home to see it in about a thousand pieces, it seems, and knowing it was going to take a couple of weeks for me to see it come to life. Oh, and besides my memories I have this Flickr pool.

*Referenced: Clark, AB, Philippines F-4 Phantom II

It is officially summer. It is officially hot. It is officially feeling the way it used to feel here, the way it has always felt in SoCal: The Lakers are talking about entering next season as contenders for a consecutive season–legitimately–and the underground hip-hop scene is back thorough,  and I am beginning to be reminded of why I love it here and why I will always love it (even if I do happen to move as it seems). And when it gets to this point in the summer, for whatever the reason, I begin listening to the records from growing up.

Recently my life has been revolving around Ice Cube records from around 1990-1993 (Amerikkkas Most Wanted to about Death Certificate/Predator), and my favorite track right now, other than ‘You Know How We Do It’ is ‘My Summer Vacation’ which was once referenced in a great The Source article tracing Mid-West gang roots in the mid-’90s. The song is a fictional account about the migration of an LA gang unit’s operation to St. Louis. Gangs have always been a part of the Mid-West life, but undoubtedly the South Central LA gang trend did find offshoots and showed its tentacles in cities like St. Louis, Chicago, Little Rock and Phoenix (in the Southwest), and this is what Ice Cube taps into so faithfully on this track.

Listen/download (for promo only) Ice Cube’s ‘My Summer Vacation’ [Here]

Recently the news that Keith Olbermann’s program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, is making significant headway towards the cable news/opinion program viewer-share domination of one Mr. Bill O’Reilly, was a sweet serenade to my ears.  And it is because Olbermann has been an archetype of sorts. Far before my political self was developed, it was Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick who taught me the dry, nuanced, smart-ass sense of humor I have on occasion been known for. It was whilst watching ESPN’s morning rerun of the “Big Show” (as Olbermann and Patrick would humorously call it, poking fun at their then believed outpost channel and placement against the real ‘big shows’: The Johnny Carson Show With Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall and Late Night With Letterman) that I learned, observed and developed it.

It is the kind of humor you see from him now and his program, still: of using understatements, irony and sometimes hyperbole to poke fun of situations and politicos–a kind of humor that pervades discussions of ‘hipster humor’ and is generally delivered with a trailing smirk, or in the once case of the Olbermann and Patrick tandem on ESPN, a subtle, understated acknowledgment. In the late ’90s when I began watching the critically praised and viewership challenged, ambitious, Aaron Sorkin ‘dramedy’ Sports Night, I recognized the allusions to the Olbermann and Patrick partnership (in Dan and Casey), and upon its canceling was even more disheartened by the fact that the show was in fact based on Olbermann and Patrick.

After some years, when he ended up at MSNBC after a stint at Fox Sports News (where he delivered a personally memorable, excoriating editorial on the circumstances surrounding Michael Jordan’s retirement before the 1999 NBA lockout), I began to watch him again, regularly. But it was still a couple of years after that–that Olbermann started to become the needed voice of an ‘angry Left,’ a bunch who has been mired in ’sissified’ perspectives on speaking out, wanting to be the good-guys and forever clinging to the aegis of non-partisan, ethical journalism practices and for the most part ‘the fair and balanced’ mantra that the ‘Other Guys Favorite Network’ always touts spuriously. Now he is the sole voice on major television network ‘news’ –the quotes are an acknowledgment that Olbermann opines possibly just a bit too much for him to be truly a newsman–that takes on the wrongs, publicly, of this current administration on the regular.

This week in The New Yorker Olbermann has seemed to reach a new cultural height, that of a profile in one of the most important magazines in the country. The piece traces Olbermann’s journalistic roots, his maverick and loose-canon streak, former wunderkind status and reputation for being difficult. But also in there, amid the less than pleasing portrayal by Peter J. Boyer, is a man on a mission to scream ‘fire’ when he sees one–calling a spade a spade. It was seen in his calling out of the Clintons’ and their surrogates’ ways during the primary run, as much as it was seen in him going right for the jugular of the President when he intimated that he gave up golf, because being filmed playing would seem insensitive to the mothers and fathers who lost their children in Iraq. (As though handing their children to the other side of the living in a not-so-well-thought-out war wasn’t insensitive!?!?)

Olbermann like many, may have his quirks and obstacles to being extremely well-liked by everyone, but it is also the reason why he can square up toe-to-toe with Bill O’Reilly. Olbermann likely doesn’t care about being liked the way most of us seemed to be enamored with it in water-cooler talk, high school lunch tables, sports teams and our various industry circles. That is not his goal. His goal  (as pretentious and self-righteous as it may be) is to call ‘bullshit’ on a ‘bullshitter’ and for that, as a Lefty, he becomes a sainted deity. The question is, as posed by the article’s writer, is Olbermann becoming the new archetype (as he did for me) of the television news industry? ‘Is Keith Olbermann changing TV news?’

Read The New Yorker’s Peter J. Boyer’s ‘One Angry Man’ [Here]

“Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits”…

R.I.P.

1st Amendment ally.

Speech is free.

Why do I love Diplo you ask? Well its really academic at this point, but for one, his mash-ups work. Every single one. (Which is more than I could say for a lot of DJs who pass out their work at myriad events and I am soon bombarded with ‘terribleness’.) Diplo takes the songs we love (and girls I love), finds semi-obscure records for them to co-mingle with sonically, and blesses all the parties involved- well (on the track). Diplo’s ‘Brew Barrymore’ has been making the rounds on these here Interwebs and I am adding this post to the roster. (What he does on ‘Brew Barrymore’ with Tribe’s ‘Electric Relaxation’ is pretty amazing.) Recently at the now-going-to-be-annual Roots picnic a couple of weeks ago, Diplo released a special mix just for the jammy and his label Mad Decent is on some serious noise-maker movements. Is this not a convincing argument?

Listen and download ‘Brew Barrymore’ [Here]

As seen originally… [Here] and [Here]

P.S. Now officially stepping away from my: ‘I am not writing anymore cool-culture stuff’ statement, made to colleagues. It’s my Rasheed Wallace ‘guarantee‘.

[Ed.Note: in a pinch this has been borrowed from another blog of mine.]

Bye, friend.

I never got to write for them. Just like Ego Trip. Just like Elemental. (Who does not even have an archived web presence anymore?) And just like Rap Pages (before their great fall). My goals are finding new ways to die in a world where everyone is supposedly ’street’ and every blogger is a ‘writer,’ and independent print journalism is under siege. I know that I may not have had the juice to, but I have the history and heart behind every word and keystroke. (And I was with them for quite some time.) I am going to miss them and cross another goal off that I didn’t hit, for the only reason that the target, itself, left the scene. Peace, Mass Appeal.

I am a better writer because of your existence.

(The last issue is still on newstands.)

From Folio Mag:

In a refrain that’s becoming all-too-familiar for niche music magazine publishers, Mass Appeal, the 12-year-old Brooklyn-based hip-hop and lifestyle magazine, is calling it quits.

The 100,000-circulation title had recently published its 50th issue.

Colossal Media, which owns Mass Appeal, will continue to publish a female-targeted spin-off, Missbehave, as well as Mass Appeal’s Web site.

Co-founder and publisher Adrian Moeller told the Web site Gawker that he is in talks to sell the Mass Appeal, and that a print edition of may eventually relaunch.

In 2005, Patrick Elasik, the magazine’s 26-year-old co-founder and co-owner, was found dead. He had been electrocuted while crossing subway tracks in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

Elasik founded the magazine with Moeller in 1996.

The shuttering of Mass Appeal is the third nationally-distributed niche music title to do so this year. In February, Seattle-based alternative country music magazine No Depression folded; Harp followed suit. In March, Resonance, a small, well-regarded Seattle-based quarterly, shut down.

Photo Credit: heronpreston

Additional Source: Grotesk

Recently NY Mag’s Intelligencer section had a survey of the progress of the 2003 graduates of the most prestigious American university (not the best, that has consistently gone to Princeton according to these guys). What is apparent is that the concentration of youth with that net worth (assets minus debts) were most likely already beneficiaries of an extreme privilege unfathomable by almost everybody. This is coming from a guy whose own university had a median (the number in the middle of income distributions–far more accurate than an average) household income nearing the six-figures. Even then, it still seems an impossibility that my classmates of relatively the same graduating class (give or take two-three years) would be on this gilded path:

A survey revealed that twenty alumni (1.3 percent) have a net worth over $10 million, with another eight worth more than $5 million. About 2.5 percent pulled in at least $500,000 in annual salary, and another 14 percent earn more than $150,000. (Thirty-seven percent make under $50,000 and 16 percent have no salary, but grad school can most likely be blamed for that.) Thirteen percent have had more than nine sexual partners since college, and 40 percent have sex more than seven times a month, but only 3 percent have children. And a mere 13 percent plan to vote for John McCain.

If only they paid and hired by knowledge…

Photo credit: eileansiar