Tag Archives: Beck

November’s 7

Matthew Hurst looking towards the Capitol along Pennsylvania Ave in DCEach month I share 7 ideas that have impacted my life over the last month.  In October I attended Oktoberfest in NYC, marched through Times Square with hundreds of others dressed like zombies, and returned to DC during the Rally to Restore Sanity.  Here’s a few notes of consequence in my life:

Blog: Wonkette has been a guilty-pleasure of mine the past two election cycles, with its tongue planted firmly in cheek.  This former-Gawker blog whose irreverent, sarcastic humor has a decidedly inside-the-beltway appeal yet still makes me LOL.

Film: 500 days of Summer. At times this film is reminiscent of the best French New Wave, almost like a sequel to 400 Blows if the protagonist grows up and moves to Los Angeles.

Meme: Rent is 2 Damn High. Jimmy McMillan stole the show at the NY governor’s debate, riding a wave of memorable one-liners that introduced this candidate to voters in every state of the union. While the candidate may have lost his election bid with less than 1% of the vote, his single-minded focus brought attention to a serious issue (housing costs) in an election dominated by Tea Parties.

Music: Charlotte Gainsbourg. On top of being an accomplished artist already, Charlotte had the good sense to reach out to Beck to produce her second solo effort. The result is claustrophobic imagery and jangled beats that build the atmosphere around story of it’s titular IRM and illness. Consider this Beck channeling Nico and Velvet Underground, making it a strong contender for Album of the Year in my book.

Social Network: Twitter. Most of Twitter’s users might not call it a social network, but that began to change this last month with a redesign that gave users an immersive experience interacting on-site with their own social graph.  Or at least Twitter has given us a new reason to use their microblog by adding insights between friends, finally giving me a reason to use their service on Twitter.com rather than any number of external tools.

Theory: Measured Life. Without realizing it, I create a mountain of data everyday; from energy usage and water consumption to daily check-ins on Foursquare.  Even though my day job is very much about measurement, I’ve only begun to leverage the insight new tools have to improve my life.  Call it Better Living Through Measurement, and I’ll be writing more about this soon.

TV Show: Community. I’ve been a fan if Dan Harmon since his Channel 101 days, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see his rapier wit on Network television.  For the uninitiated, this sitcom depicts a study group of misfits at a local college, who play out some common sitcom themes.  Needless to say, I LOL watching this show.

Continue reading November’s 7

July’s 7

Just when you though 2009 couldn’t get any more crazy, this last month saw witness to revolutions taking place in the streets and online, overshadowed by celebrity deaths and iPhones.  So it’s time once again for me to share some of the trends and ideas that have emerged  in my sphere of influence recently:

Comic: Superhouse. A new webcomic, illustrated by the Chris Maue.  Required reading if you like to LOL.

Meme: Michael Jackson. Did anyone even remember how much they enjoyed the King of Pop as an entertainer anymore? Within minutes of his death millions of people reacted in shock, and later celebration of this musical icon. In the wake of the news, websites like CNN, Twitter, and even Google received spikes in traffic that nearly took down their servers.

Music: Beck’s Record Club project.  Every week Beck releases a cover version of a song through each sequential track from a record album. First up he’s recording The Velvet Underground & Nico. These cover songs are accompanied by original music videos they make themselves. Beck has always been and will probably remain the most significant musical influence in my life.

Politics: Iran Election. Maybe you remember hearing about this before a bunch of celebrities died? For a little while it looked like real democratic reform was about to take place at the will of it’s people.  People around the world rallied to their support, and Twitter became really important.  This last month has been heartbreaking.

Social Network: TIE – Reddit & Kirtsy.  Social Bookmarks are the agenda setting mediums for the 21st century.  Whereas Reddit serves an audience more engaged with newsmedia, with measurable influence in this community.  Kirtsy offers many of the same great shared links, but without the misogyny that prevails on Digg (among others).

Theory: Image Repair Discourse.  Benoit provides a model through which reputations can be repaired through appropriate responses to each crisis.  Depending on the nature of the crisis, there are several strategies through denial, evading responsibility, reducing offensiveness, mortification, and taking corrective action.  These are strategic approaches to communicating with the public about your impact during a crisis.

Video: DTV Transition.  On June 12th, broadcast television signals were   switched from analog to all digital signals.  Believe it or not, millions of people did not know about or how to make the switch to DTV.  After all my work helping to spread the word online last year, I was happy to tune in for the last night of analog TV.