With over 20 million accounts, Second Life has become a pop culture phenomenon. An Internet-based virtual world, the metaverse in which we can be the person we've always wanted to be (without putting in the hard-work of exercise or educational training) have very few competitors. Currently, there is an exhibition going on in Boston called Mixed Realities - an exploration of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks.
1
Results tagged “popculture”
21+ / 10p - 2a
Super Bowl Media Day is the professional football equivalent of the annual family reunion. A bunch of people get together, often traveling long distances, for the purpose of catching up. There's little that they have in common, but since they sort of fall under the same name, everyone has to make nice. The hijinks on display makes for a hilarious time for those not directly involved. People make nice and dumb down the stories of what they do and who they are in order to appease the extended family, and the whole thing would be much more enjoyable for all involved if alcohol was part of the equation. Someone (or, rather, many someones) wind up doing something dumb that seemed like a really good idea at the time, but is really foolish in retrospect.
Riding high from his Michigan victory and the continued defeats of rival Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney is on a tear through Florida, and he's trying to connect with the young people. Unfortunately, Romney's pop culture references are stuck as far back in time as his well-preserved face. He buddied up with African-American teens and tried to sling lingo that he thought they would like. In fact, he uttered the immortal line, "Who Let the Dogs Out? Oooh ... ooh ... oooh." Dig it:
Thespians stopped by Boston this week to read for the miniseries that will be based on BU professor and left-wing darling Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. And here's what happens when an intellectual heavyweight's work gets mixed up with this thing we call pop culture:
This past September something innovative happened in Boston. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum launched a webcast. It wasn't just any webcast, it was a creative commons licensed release of concerts performed as part of the long standing museum concert series. It's allowed users world wide to take in a little classical music culture by downloading the file and playing it on their iPod, in the windows media center or whatever MP3 compatible device they choose....
Boston joins in the celebration of late Warhol muse and Pop Art Poster Girl Edie Sedgwick. Tonight, the MFA will screen Sedgwick's final movie, Ciao! Manhattan, which was released shortly after her death in 1971. The Sedgwick tribute is timed to complement the release of Edie: Girl on Fire by David Weisman, who also directed Ciao! Manhattan, and Melissa Painter. It's probably a good idea to see Sedgwick on screen and read about her...
Chuck Klosterman is currently considered a voice of a generation. The age range is about 19-25, and it was with his second book, "Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto," that he solidified himself as a name worth knowing. Starting as a news and sports writer, he moved over to rock criticism, but he's now writing a column for Esquire, and freelancing just about everywhere else. "Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade Of Curious People And Dangerous Ideas," with its lengthy title and appealing cover art of blurry Manhattan crowd shots at 5 am, is currently touring with its author in tow, and Monday’s stop was an intimate reading at the Brattle Theatre.
New Edition and New Kids on the Block arrived on the scene about the same time as MTV, or after the music video station had already become engrained in pop culture. Other Boston bands had been around a lot longer than the music television station. Aerosmith found new success in a younger market when they released Get A Grip. It surged in radio play and with the wild popularity of the music videos. Crazy, Amazing, and Cryin, three videos made from singles off that album, starred Alicia Silverstone (before she was Clueless). They may have been the first set of videos that we remember being overplayed on MTV. But we haven't seen them for a while, until today. We'll wrap up this homage to twenty-five years of MTV by dropping Aerosmith's Amazing below. Be on the look out for the CD caddy used and when the screen flashes "cyberspace entered," young geeks at home wishing their VR set up was that, um, amazing. If you're in the mood for some ass-kicking Alicia watch Cryin. For hot schoolgirl Silverstone check out Crazy.
Every now and again an internet video catches the eye as being tangentially relevant to current events. In these instances there's a unique opportunity for us to make an irrelevant point about pop culture and the news while showcasing a couple of minutes of multimedia. Today we take the opportunity to highlight the fact that the 39th murder this year in the city of Boston took place yesterday. The recent upswing in violent crime has been slightly offset with a dip in burglaries.
A little bit of comedy, mixed with political commentary, some pop culture, and interesting interviews. This is exactly what Baratunde delivers on his podcast, the Front Porch Podcast.
Bostonist is not going to "live blog" the Academy Awards like some of our counterparts. They may sit down to lunch everyday next to movie stars and other pop culture icons that roam their streets. We've got Danny Aiello in the North End filming his next movie, Ben Affleck every now and again back here in the Hub (visiting his Mom is what we've been told-he secretly keeps a pad in southie too) and a handful of Val Kilmer sightings on the Green Line.
With the release of their independent hit, “Swingers,” in late 1996, Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn introduced into our pop culture a new vernacular based on Sinatra’s Rat Pack. “You’re so money” became 1997’s biggest catch phrase, and swing dance lessons suddenly became a lucrative business. All of this boded well for the opening of The Good Life, a bar and restaurant seemingly ripped straight from Favreau’s screenplay and placed across the street from a homeless shelter on Kingston Street in downtown Boston.
Everyone in Boston has seemingly fallen in love with the tabloid. The Herald—classic tabloid, The (Weekly) Dig—stapled, redesigned tabloid, The Metro—free tabloid, The Phoenix—booted the fold tabloid. The Boston Globe goes tabloid today with the launch of their new six times weekly (Mon-Sat) feature "Sidekick." Unlike the recent redesign over at the Phoenix, the Boston Globe will still fold twice, horizontal and vertical rise will be creased. James Reed will be editing Sidekick, which...
Yeah, Sublimidible. Bostonist has heard Dubya utter that word a thousand times in rerun clips in the past four years, in fact we're pretty sure it came up as a hip hop mix during the last election cycle. According to a Boston Globe report last week the election debacle of 2000 is what got DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid kicked into gear speaking out about politics and history. Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, remixed a film into a multimedia presentation "Rebirth of a Nation" that will be performed for the first time locally Friday at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. The presentation has been performed around the country but DJ Spooky will perform the new work locally as part of Harvard’s Learning From Performers series. The performance will be followed by a discussion and question and answered session with real academic feel, moderated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chair of Harvard's Dept. of African and African American Studies. Get a preview of what’s in store Friday night at an event tonight at the Harvard Book Store at 6:30 p.m. Rhythm Science, Paul Miller’s book, has met some critical acclaim. The book speaks to mixing and the art form of the DJ. The pop culture favorite DJ anthology today seems to be the 36 Chambers, The RZA’s discusson of the Wu-Tang phenomenon. Rhythm Science was just released in paperback, with a CD, on March 1, 2005 (It came out hardcover last summer). Catch the DJ in Cambridge for two days of thinking hip hop not as a cultural phenomenon but as a method to splice old and new ideas into a newly creative work.
« Previous
1
Next »