The Slacker Factor Podcast, Episode 12:  Quality Otter Haircuts and the Pirated Music of Bjorkestra (not necessarily in that order)

Tune in to see just how the words in the title actually combine to form a coherent episode of The Slacker Factor.

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Meandering Rant: Business and Competition by Christian

Book Report: Music Piracy by Rob

Music Segment:  Travis Sullivan’s Bjorkestra

The Slacker Factor Podcast, Episode 11:  Crazy like Patty (or Snooki)

Your crack team of Slackers explores what’s real and what’s faux and Patty decides she’s cooler than Snooki in her “Reality is
Overrated” rant. Christian ponders the future of the suprising long-time coming electric car. And we feast our ears on the alt-pop of Draz. Now that’s a show! (or is it?)

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Meandering Rant: Reality Is Overrated by Patty

Book Report: Electric Cars by Christian

Music Segment:  Sunday Rain by Draz

Borrowed from BT Internet Rangers

I was talking with a buddy of mine who reads the Slacker Factor and he commented that he enjoys the blog and podcast, but he said he thought I was a bit negative at times.  Maybe even bordering on angry on occasion. I certainly don’t view myself as angry.  In fact I know for certain that today the sun came up, a puppy was born, and a baby took his first steps.  So, life is great!

Unfortunately, Glenn Beck still sucks.

From "We Blog Cartoons"

Alright, I admit it.  I have iPad envy… and its not because my iPhone is small.  Well, maybe it is.  Anyway, I was out the other night chilling with the family having some sushi and the table next to me of college kids had a new iPad and were showing it off.  And damn!  It is as cool as it looks on TV.  I haven’t actually had the chance to hold one and play with it but it does look seriously cool.

One thing that can go away is the constant media attention to it.  I can’t turn on the TV or radio without someone talking about iPad this or iPad that.  Its everywhere! Which is probably why they have sold 500k of them already.

Does everyone who writes and article or has a blog feel compelled to write about the thing?  Oh wait.  Anyway, I don’t think I will be able to get a P.O. from the wife to get one anytime soon so I will have to learn to live with envy.

And my iPhone is not small.

Here's to you MTV!

Well, its official.  MTV has announced their focus on Millennials, casting aside Generation X… the generation that made MTV.  Sad news indeed.  I’d like to give a big FU to MTV.  Not just for this recent admission, but for the crap they have been broadcasting for the past 20 years.  There was a time when MTV was about music television.  It was certainly a revolutionary, but simple, concept that changed music forever.  Play popular music but with supporting video.  It changed everything.  No longer were we sitting by the radio listening to music while doing something else.  Now we were completely focused on the music as a total sensory experience.  And when I say focused, I mean sitting like a zombie starring at the TV, one music video after another… completely enthralled.  It was a perfect formula and our generation shaped it.

Then something along the way happened.  Something terrible.  MTV changed focus from what made them great, music television, to a soap opera channel.  I blame the Real World and it was all down hill from there, recently culminating with Jersey Shore.  While this metamorphosis was occurring, MTV did still try to retain the Generation X market via MTV2.  This worked for a while but ultimately failed.  I want my MTV!

As I mentioned, we shaped MTV, but in a way it shaped us as well.  It changed how we absorbed music and how we responded to it on a social level.  Do you remember going into school on Monday after seeing the latest and greatest new MTV Video over the weekend???  MTV Network President Van Toffler said “Millennials are really about authentic reality and family” and that MTV “played up the camaraderie and famliy elements on Jersey Shore to appeal to them”.  What???  Has he seen Jersey Shore???  If this is any reflection on what Millennials are about, or if they are at all being shaped by MTV’s content… God help us all.

Certainly on some level I can understand MTV now focusing on Millennials.   They spend the most time in front of the television and apparently care far less about music than our generation had.  I wonder though, would Gen-Xers spend some of our prime time viewing hours watching MTV if there were still something that appealed to us?  Its hard to say because, despite their recent admission, MTV cast us aside many years ago.  So, again MTV… FU.  How’s that for cynical?

~cg

Through history people have paid tribute to those who affected them most.  In the past it was high placed political powers such as monarchs or statesmen,  but since the advent of television this adoration has broadened to include celebrities.  The availability of electronic media provided a platform but tabloids and the internet brought it to extreme levels.

When Elvis died it was obviously a big story and deserved “news” coverage.  The same can be said for John Lennon, Michael Jackson, etc largely in part to their untimely deaths.  But where does the media draw the line as to what is worth “breaking news coverage”?  Are D list celebrities worthy of such coverage.  Do we need to know that a Reality TV contestant died?  Or a TV shill?  Where is the line drawn?  Do we need a cable station devoted to death much like the Weather Channel?

There is a morbid curiosity we all share whether we want to admit it or not.  We see it every day with the traffic jams caused by an accident.  So many people trying to get a glimpse of the victim.  Some of us from the corner of our eye and others shamelessly craning their necks.  Some read the obituaries to see who we may know who have died.  Others reading for the tragedy of someone taken too soon.  Is celebrity death that same morbid curiosity magnified?  Perhaps it’s because, while we somehow share celebrities and feel a strange attachment, though they really are detached.  We may feel some sense of loss, but certainly not as we would with a friend or family member.  Its different.  Its more akin to reading a book or watching a movie where the protagonist dies tragically at the end, or maybe goes out in flames while giving his middle finger to the establishment.  Or maybe its deeper than that and somehow through their loss we gain more appreciation of our lives?

Perhaps in death it’s that celebrities’ last bit of entertainment they are giving to the public.   Their last chance on the stage.  But even then, do we let them rest in peace?  With the family fights over recording or movie rights or new release of unseen footage.   The answer is sadly no.

The interest in celebrity death even goes so far as to have hoax’s emailed out with some elaborate story about how the celebrity died in some dramatic, often implausible, fashion.  How many celebrity (usually B list) death hoax’s went out around the same time as Michael Jacksons death was announced?  I guess we can thank the internet for that.  I don’t imagine that the same happened when Elvis died.  Although the closest thing at that time, the National Enquirer, did sell 8 million copies of an issue that featured a cover shot of Elvis Presley in a coffin.

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently ran a mini-series of articles about Generation X and Retirement written by Maria Panaritis. I know what you are thinking, we are still way too young to really worry about retirement.  So many things can happen that are out of our control between now and retirement, there isn’t much sense sweating it too much.  Well, if you haven’t been thinking about retirement, its time to start.   Now, I don’t want to bring you down but… reading this may.

Between making less overall than our parents did (accounting for inflation etc), the housing market just plain sucks, Baby Boomers taking forever to retire and eating up social security and basically sucking the life out of the economy, and don’t forget the cost of health care; Maria points out we are pretty much SOL.  And lets not forget about the melting polar ice caps, but that’s for another bitch session.

Maybe it is time to just roll over and accept the fact that we are screwed on so many levels?  Never!  If Generation X knows anything, its that we can expect the worst and there isn’t much we can do about any of it.  But don’t give up hope, somehow we always persevere.  ~cg

So, did you ever have one of those days where you wake up and you don’t know what to do with yourself so you just lay in bed and stare up and think about how dust gets trapped on the ceiling, of all places, and how it is probably falling on you while you sleep and maybe that is why your hair is so dry and you flip on your computer-radio-TV and witness the same old blather-blather about pop star addictions, and lying politicians……and dying teenagers trapped in a desert half-way around the world and your mind starts to spin about how you wish you could make a difference and how most people are annoyingly indifferent and they’d rather unplug by watching the unreal world of reality TV than face the real realities of the living and all of the intensity of your disappointment makes you aggravated and stressed and you start to focus on your personal issues like unfinished projects and debt and weight and you think, just for a minute, about getting up paying your bills and working out, and then you remember your ratty sweatpants and your worn-out concert t-shirts and your hyper-extended credit cards and you’re unsure if you have any clean socks anyway so instead you visualize yourself working out confidently and you wonder why you’re not sculpting your beautiful body just though your ability to positively imagine yourself that way because that is what all the new age wonderfulness teaches – to imagine yourself in the reality you desire and create your own destiny, but you don’t have that kind of patience, and you feel angry that your mind-power has not made you and your world perfect and then more angry when your realize that the drool spot on your pillow is taking forever to evaporate and you don’t have the motivation or the energy to shift your body to relieve your shoulder tension, so you just watch that damn ceiling dust cascade into your hair.

~pp

The result of a creative exercise with some friends, this piece morphed into a spoken-word performance thing, and then into the opening slack piece.  The definition of myself reflects the definition of all of us.

<Listen to TSF0: The Episode before the Episode here>