Slop? Stop!
Keeping it brief...
The original poster for one of my favorite films, American Graffiti, asks “Where were you in ’62?” above its iconic Mort Drucker artwork. I know where I was: being born.
More and more 1962 seems a good year to have entered this world. I’ve experienced much of my time absent the “flat black rectangle” and all it engendered* to make life today so unbearable. Like the subject of American Graffiti, I existed in a relative idyll. Mine wasn’t full of sweet hot rods (shitty sub-$1,000 cars? Yes) but rock & roll – America’s greatest export – sustained it and the best film George Lucas ever made (stuff your Star Wars) was a leaping off point. I was 12 when I first saw American Graffiti and stayed in the theater to watch it a second time, then ran out and bought the soundtrack. Sure, I had the first four Beatles albums courtesy of my cousins in the Bronx and regularly heard “oldies” via WCBS-FM. But now Chuck Berry and The Vikings and The Platters and The Beach Boys were mine to listen to whenever I wanted. All I had to do was grab the 2-LP set, pull out a disc, slap it on my mother’s BSR turntable and turn it up.
Back then, we didn’t call it “physical media” because there was no other kind. Now “the kids” seek out vinyl, CDs, cassettes, VHS tapes – VHS, for chrissakes – desiring something tangible and analog in a virtual digital world. At the Totally Rad vintage fest I attended recently there was brisk business in all of the above, plus vintage phones and film cameras. I walked around squinting, not quite believing my eyes. This can’t all be due to the popularity of Stranger Things, can it? Then I hear about “dumb phones” and startup companies that exist solely to reintroduce the concept of “friction” back into a world for whom everything has gotten too easy. The flat black rectangle is magic in that it can bring you everything up to and including a mate. But the more time I spend on mine, the more miserable I am. My happiest moments these days can be found reading a book or out in the garage on my workbench. No sooner do I pick up my phone than I’m plunged back into a world stuffed to overflowing with “content” that rarely leave you content. Now comes the rise of AI and the slop it generates ’til we’re drowning in unreality.
Not that I’m looking to stick my head in the sand but there’s such a thing as being too much with the world.
I’m going to go read a book and I’ll have a longer NIHILISTIC for you next week. Because what you need is more CONTENT.