Pop Culture

Secret Menu Items From Popular Restaurants

by

2013 03 01 Chipotle QuesaritoBusiness Insider has an incredible slideshow of secret menu items you can order from well-known restaurants from McDonald’s to Chipotle. I only got three items into the list when I discovered the Chipotle Quesarito (it’s a burrito, but wrapped in cheese quesadilla) before I knew that this was informatinon that had to be shared.

You’ve got to check the list out yourself. It’s at once amazing and terrifying.

(Why Business Insider, of all places? I have no idea.)

Liu Bolin: The Art of the Invisible Man

by

2013 02 25 Liu Bolin Great Wall

You might have seen some photos of this before: Chinese performance artist Liu Bolin poses in front of interesting landscapes (like the Great Wall of China), and then his assistants paint him completely so that he blends into his surroundings. Sometimes he’s actually really hard to find. (Beat that, Waldo!)

2013 02 25 Liu Bolin Bulldozer

This one (below) is actually my favorite, but there are several more cool ones to check out.

2013 02 25 Liu Bolin Construction

Friday Music: The Killers

by

I like The Killers. Who doesn’t like The Killers? My favorite song by them, even before I knew what it was about, is Bling (Confessions of a King).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkfNkdHXX10

2013 02 11 Brandon FlowersIt turns out that the song actually has a concrete meaning, however. It’s “the victorious story of Flowers’ dad forswearing – overnight – alcoholism and Catholicism to become a Mormon when Brandon was five” (Guardian). They lyrics, which are beautiful but far from clear, are even more powerful for me in that context. 

Read more

SW Fans Out of Control: Kickstarting Death Star and X-Wings

by

2013 02 14 Mickey Vader

It’s understandable that Star Wars fans would be energetic after the Disney purchase of LucasFilmsn and subsequent announcement that Disney intends to do to the Star Wars franchise what they are doing for Marvel: milk it for all its worth with a series of major films (Avengers / new trilogy) and stand-alone films (Iron Man or Thor / Han Solo or Yoda). Given how well this has worked for Marvel, Disney, and comic fans so far, it’s no wonder everyone is excited.

But things are getting seriously out of hand.

Not long ago, the White House issued an official reponse to the official petition to build a Death Star (“The Administration does not support blowing up planets.”) and then raised to 100,000 signatures the threshold to trigger an official response (so the Death Star petition, with only 34,435, wouldn’t have required a response). Naturally, the Galactic Empire responded to the White House’s announcement:

Representatives on behalf of the nation-state leader from the unimaginatively named planet refused to acknowledge the obvious cowardice of their choice, preferring instead to attribute the decision to fiscal responsibility.

It did not end there, however.

2013 02 14 Deathstar

Next thing you know, there’s a Kickstarter project with a goal of £20,000,000 to create an open-source Death Star. (Why would it be open source?) So far, £254,438 have been pledged. That’s real money, folks, although given the size of the goal it’s unlikely that anyone will actually have to cough up the dough.  Technically, the initial goal is only to draw up detailed plans and invest in “enough chicken wire to protect reactor exhaust ports.” The stretch goal, to actually build the Death Star, is £543,000,000,000,000,000. (That’s “quadrillions”, in case you were curious.)

Not to take this lying down, the Rebels have now responded with their own Kickstarter. Naturally, they are raising money to build X-wing fighters. (I guess they didn’t get the memo about the chicken wire for the exhuast ports.) So far they have only a fraction of the backers (300 vs 1,700) but they are doing better on the money front. They’ve raised about $300,000 (note: dollars, not pounds) so they’re still behind but they are much closer than they should be based just on number of backers. The Force is strong with them, apparently.  Their initial goal is $11,000,000 (the cost of the first Star Wars movie, not accounting for inflation), but stretch goals include an entire squadron of X-Wings ($4,485,672,683), “a Class YT-1300 Freighter (heavily modified) and a crew consisting of a Corellian smuggler and a Wookiee co-pilot” (13 million standard Galactic Credits), and Y-wing bombers ($23,000,000). The stretch goals aren’t in any sensible order, but at least it does make (some) sense for the Rebels to be open-sourcing their plans.

2013 02 14 X Wings

All of this is both hilarious and awesome.

But also a teensy bit creepy. I envision our civilization collapsing, a new civilization arising, and digital archeologists reconstructing some of the Web and wondering “Were all these people completely insane?” I often wonder about Greek mythology too, and think that rather than being particularly naive and gullible, the Ancient Greeks were just having some serious meta-humor that we’re totally missing out on.

In any case, I don’t plan on contributing to either Kickstarter. Why? With a month and a half left for each one, I’m kind of afraid they might actually hit their goals…

Lena Dunham and Privilege

by

I don’t watch Girls (or anything else with, from, or about Lena Dunham), but I was still interested in Silpa Kovvali’s take on Lena Dunham and privilege.

The clear implication is that Girls is an origin tale of sorts, chronicling what life was like for Dunham before she got it together and made it big. But in reality, Dunham and her castmates, all of comparable pedigree, are by and large playing characters far less privileged than they are. AtGirls‘s worst moments, the show veers dangerously close to mocking people poorer than her. Its most prominent theme — Hannah’s irresponsibility, laziness, and self-satisfaction — seems less a systemic critique of unpaid creative internships than an allegation that middle class kids who wish to pursue the same career paths as their upper class friends are spoiled and bratty. In a particularly grating scene, Hannah’s mother shrilly screams that she is cutting her daughter off because she wants a lake house. But it is simply good parenting for members of the middle class to steer their children away from fields that don’t promise a steady income. They don’t have the luxury of supporting their children forever, even if they’re willing to forego their desire to “sit by a fucking lake.”

Yet when asked about what distinguishes her from Hannah, Dunham shows no comprehension of the degree to which privilege can drive life choices. Frighteningly, she sees herself as less entitled than her on-screen counterpart, whose parents revoke their financial support in the series’s opening scene. “I’m sure that I’ve had some really unattractive, spoiled moments in my years, but I’ve never — that conversation that Hannah had has never happened to me, in large part because when I graduated from college, my parents let me live with them, but they made it really clear that they weren’t going to support any of my endeavors,” she told NPR. One wonders precisely what the starlet thinks supporting oneself means. The most glaring differences between Dunham and her character seem to be that she is far wealthier, better-connected, and has parents who live in Manhattan.

I’ve been reading more and more about privilege and class issues over the last couple of years, and this is one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read.