Rock Fashion 2006: Strange looks are the new cool

Sept. 3 - One thing the MTV Video Music Awards showed me is the abundance of costumed rockers out there. Theatrics abound with looks that are flamboyant and strange, in so much marked contrast to the jeans and t-shirt rockers we are used to from the 90s. The apparent elements across many bands that I've noticed includes matching ensembles ala Sgt. Pepper (see My Chemical Romance, shown above) or a strange crossover of new wave, goth and punk stylings and of course plenty of bangs. Bands include AFI, Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco. Even Jared Leto is in on the action with a Marilyn Manson doppelganger going on. When and how does he transform back into Jared Leto the film actor?

His creation of mascara and angst is testament to the general tone of music fashion today. It's about expression and standing out and marking the difference between performers and their audience. They don't dress like actual people on the street because at the moment we don't want our rock stars to be like us.

March 13 - It's winter, even in L.A. where there's been a chill of late. Giving all the Eastern transplants a reason to break out their favorite coats and scarves. But an even better sign of winter is the enlarging number of girls in boots. You see them everywhere, whether wintry moon boots, ugg and mukluks, funky cowboy style or leathery dominatrix. Like hats a few years ago, boots are used to show independence and attitude. Some are incredibly elaborate and glittery to reflect personal style.

For now I'm a fan of the snow bunny look. It's cute. Hot even on some girls. But I know there is an element of fantasy and make-believe with it. It's like pretending to be at a ski lodge. Or with the newer variation, boots with tight leggings, it's like being a figure skater on leave in Torino. But for now since the calendar says winter, so must the clothes.

Feb. 17 - So, for Christmas I bought myself a new video iPod, a black 30gb unit. At the time my current iPod was less than a year old, but I had to have the sleeker model with photo and video capability. Now rumors are that this Spring I will have a reason to buy an even newer new iPod. According to AdRants today, Apple will put out a full screen video iPod. Meaning that the entire front face, all 3.5 inches, will turn into the screen. A touchable menu click wheel will appear and disappear as needed. See below. {Source}

Stern From Space
Howard's first day on satellite is big news

Jan. 9 - I love Howard Stern, so it is no surprise that I was primed with my new Sirius device listening today on his first day of satellite radio. But I was surprised how much of the news media were also tuned in. Every major outlet, from CNN and NPR to Yahoo! portals and Access Hollywood had trucks of reporters and broadcasting equipment outside the Sirius building to file stories. There was a press conference held live during the show.

Howard is big news, and so is his switch to satellite. But many reports only focused on how he would be uncensored on satellite with headlines like "Howard Unleashed" and a expletive tracker that recorded 129 curse words. They miss the point of what Howard is. He is an entertainer and social commentator. His appeal was never due to his supposed raunchiness. If you listen to him, you want to know what he thinks about the news, you want to hear his searing interviews that don't soft peddle celebrities. Smartly Howard himself recognizes this and on the first show pledged to watch the cursing. He even scolded other cast members for dropping the f-bomb too liberally. Of course there was some cursing, but it was truly welcomed when hearing the famous Pat O'Brien tapes. Wow! We have all heard those tapes for months and thought we knew what the bleeped words were, but O'Brien proved to be a much greater perv than could be imagined!

In other show news, George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu), a frequent guest on the show was announced as the new announcer. Then following the show and every show is a one-hour wrap up with producer Gary Dell'Abate and Jon Hein (host of another Stern Sirius program, "The Super Fan Roundtable.") These and a replay each evening at 6pm PT are great additions for Stern fans and bring listeners into the world of the show like never before. In the press conference, Stern remarked that satellite, in particular his two channels, are what the iPod can never be — a provider of content. Based on the first day's show and what followed later in the day, Stern plans to live up to that bold statement.

The Stern Show on Sirius

Detailed Recap

Dec. 4 - A research company, BuzzMetrics, just announced they will begin tracking the internet for online buzz about TV shows. It is amazing that the TV industry is looking at this newfangled internet thingy, especially since it is so risky and uncertain. What? It's about time. If you gathered together everyone who has lived online since 1995, it would probably fill four entire continents! BuzzMetrics CEO Jonathan Carson (no relation to the late Mr. Late Night) announced his company's new product in a press release. The flaw as I see it is that the service is only tracking network shows and missing out on cable fare like Laguna Beach, Nip/Tuck, Monk and Battlestar Galactica which tend to garner the most rabid fan buzz. I won't include HBO shows since advertisers are not interested in how much buzz they get.

Top 10 New Television Programs (October Ranking)
*Ranked By TV Buzz Rating Engagement Index
Source: BuzzMetrics

1. My Name Is Earl
2. Prison Break
3. Surface
4. Supernatural
5. The Apprentice: Martha Stewart
6. How I Met Your Mother
7. Invasion
8. Night Stalker
9. Commander In Chief
10. Out Of Practice

Chances are one of your friends has posted pictures from last night's party onto a photo sharing site. But I'll bet that you and your friends are nowhere as cool and hip as the NYC scenesters that populate the site known as Last Night's Party.

The site, created by photographer Merlin Bronques was featured in last month's Rolling Stone. He must be really popular because each morning there are new posts from Manhattan parties. Debutantes, socialites, minor celebs and just plain drunk girls living the high life. With the headlines "Relive last night," the site is a cold reminder of what tequila does to inhibitions, and how we need to outlaw oversized sunglasses asap!

Last Night's Party

I think Samsung used to make cheap TV sets. It was a Korean knock-off of Sony that has recently stood out as a technology innovator in the cellphone arena. They have a phone that is all over Europe - the SGH-D500 that I desperately want - and several other cool advancements.

Such as patenting a way to unsend text messages for those that have second thoughts about drunken messaging. Or the beat box enabled SCH-S310 model released in May as the "world's first motion-cognitive phone." It allows for beats, drums and sounds to be produced by the phone. According to the Web site Phonemag "A built-in sensor reads gestures; thus when users draw a circle with the phone while pressing the button on the side, the phone will say, “cool,” and when they draw an X, the phone will say, “I hate you,” or “I don’t like it.”

As for the phone I want, either the SGH-D500 or D600, it looks like the sleek Darth Vader of phones (see below). It has Bluetooth technology, a 7X zoom mega pixel digital camera and 80mb of storage space for MP3s and photos. Plus the slider design actually is cool compared to other offerings.

Samsung is doing something right. Interestingly the significance of their logo is meant to stand for innovation and change (the elliptical shape of the blue) and the partial letters S and G "break out the oval to connect the interior with the exterior, showing Samsung's desire to become with the world together as one."

Patent to Unsend Texts {Phonemag}
Beat Box Cell {Phonemag}
Samsung SGH-D600 {Cnet Asia}

Not that this podcasting thing isn't a big deal (one million downloads in two days when it launched within iTunes last month), but we are all sorta sick of hearing about it. Until music is part of the mix. its true promise lies in the future. Right now podcasting remains all talk in format due to music licenscing restrictions. A recent AP article confirms my point with the general manager of KCRW, a podcast pioneer, saying "It takes off the second that someone gets the music rights." The article also presents a good overview of the industry as it exists today.

Podcasting Spurs a Media Land Grab {AP News}

While I fully realize that liking a Hummer in the age of hybrids is akin to thinking The Dukes of Hazzard is fine art, I have to admit that the look of the new H3 and its music-infused TV and web campaign are dead-on cool. With tracks from Paul Oakenfold, Ratatat (as featured in the current Black Book) and EVAC blasting over a crusty desert landscape, the H3 climbs, curves and oozes über-design. It is hard to take your eyes off the vehicle that may become this year's "must have" for rappers, basketball players and Sunset Strip cruisers. Of course the base model, which is advertised for under $30k, will not do for those types who will trick out and "ice" their rides.

The Hummer Site

Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal {Yahoo!}

I want to gag when I hear someone say "I don't even have a TV." It comes across as a boast; as a way to seem more refined than the low culture mob. There are lesser versions of this you may hear like Screw the Sith, there's a Swedish film opening up next door. I only watch Discovery or nature shows. I found out about "crunk" on an NPR segment. While these vocal asides are minor in comparison to egghead movements like "National TV Turn-Off Week," they come from the same place. One that dismisses what is popular, just because it is popular.

So I often feel the need to stand up for pop culture. Recently there were two books that helped with the cause. In "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter" [Riverhead, 2005], author Stephen Johnson compares modern video games and TV shows to those of the 1970s, where people presumably sat brain dead with Three's Company and pong.

more

So welcome to "roadcasting," which is the ability to pick up MP3 signals from nearby cars, essentially allowing anyone to create their own pirate radio stations. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing this as an ad hoc networking system that works within a 30-mile radius. It is available as a prototype from Roadcasting.Org, which is probably too complicated to try out for now. Give it another year or enlist your favorite techno geek.

Watch for Roadcasting Rage {Wired News}
Roadcasting.Org

For most people, the terms "trend" and "fad" are used interchangeably. When the media tell us "what's hot" they label them as trends. Someone who wears the latest fashions or has obscure new music on their iPod is called "trendy." But maybe they should be "faddy." This could be just a discussion of semantics, but perhaps there is a difference.

Fads are short-term fanaticisms; a blip in culture time whereby it seems the whole world is joined in the same craze. Trends, though, may represent long-term changes or movements that are substantial to society. They become part of our DNA

{read more}

For most of the 90s it seemed that girls were given stripper names (Amber or Kayla) and boys were named for some western character (Wyatt or Cody). But after looking at the top five girls' and boys' names for that decade and comparing them amongst high-end and lower income families with the most popular names of 1980 and 2000, the authors see a verifiable pattern. Namely that once a name becomes popular in the higher tax brackets, the name filters down to families with lower incomes over the course of 10 years or so.

So they go on to project what will be the most popular names of 2015 based on what rich people are naming their kids today. Many of them are very uppity, aspirational or Irish in the case of Finnegan, Flannery and Linden.

Trading Up: Where do Baby Names Come From? {Slate}

Maxïmo Park	The Killers	The Futureheads

When hair metal died in the early 90s, so did the notion of a band dressing up to create an image. But now there is a new wave of indie rock with bands who appear to be shopping at the same stores. Or perhaps employing the same stylist. These acts - The Killers, Interpol, Maxïmo Park, The Kaiser Chiefs, Futureheads, Every Move a Picture and others - are classing up pop music with suits and ties. No ripped jeans or flannels to be found. It is like a return to the early 60s and how bands would dress for performances on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

{more}

It's in to be brunette, at least according to an article and radio interview produced for P&G's Pantene, who of course make products for color-treated hair. Despite the dubious source, there is a trend of sorts afoot with Ashlee Simpson, Nicky Hilton and Renee Zellwegger ditching their golden locks within the last year.

Brunettes Have More Fun in 2005 {Newstream.com}

The primates over at Monkeycube detail an emerging music phenomenon, Podcasting, which is when you put together a playlist and have others download it and play it back like a radio show. Like blogs, which journal the authors' lives, Podcasting is his mixtape made public to the world.

Because of the digitalization of music (goodbye CDs) and popularity of iPods and iTunes, playlists and sets can originate from anywhere. So while you are sitting there at work, turn on your PC instead of the local A/C or light Jazz radio station. "Just as blogs are a journalistic leveler, Podcasting will be the radio medium's leveler," says the Monkeycube article, which goes on to present the top two reasons why Podcasting is better than radio:

1. It's fully customizable. If you don't like something, delete it and never download it again. If you love it, e-mail the host and request something special. Odds are they'll be flattered.
2. You will never have those driveway/parking lot wait-to-get-out-of-the-car moments again. Simply pause and resume when you get to your desk or get back to the car later.

In the continuing effort to make smart-ass lists to mark the end of the year, here is one with the people, places or things that should end with it. Let's hope to see less of them in 2005, their time has passed.

Sourcing stories from Trendcentral is too obvious and easy for most days, but the new Drunk Dial Blocker deserves attention and commentary. According to the site, Virgin Mobile users in Australia can enter in a list of numbers they are worried about calling when drunk and the phone blocks them from being dialed until the next morning. Presumably by that time the booty call urge or desire to ask the ex- what happened to us has passed. With this invention, no more checking your "outgoing call history" the next morning with your fingers crossed.

Help for Drunken Dialers {National Nine News}

It is nearly 2005, the fifth year of this decade called the 00s. But what are its defining themes and movements? What are the key trends that label and shape where we are and how we will look back on this first decade of the third millennium? The answer may be nothing yet.

Think about it. At this point in the 80s and 90s (see below) there were numerous fashion, music and technological breakthroughs that defined them and were markedly different from the decades that preceded them. What is there in the 00s that is not just a hangover from the late 90s? Hip Hop still rules the charts, back tattoos and belly rings continue to be placed onto new batches of kids and our clothes and hairstyles are fairly similar.

To be fair there have been fads born in the 00s, like the Atkins Diet, faux hawks, striped ties, shirts and suit jackets, wide leather watchbands and Armstrong bracelets. The rise of designer jeans and pointy shoes for women in place of the obscene platforms of the late 90s. But do they make a defining statement or even a caricature of what someone from the 00s looks like? Chances are if aliens landed on Earth today they would want to party like its 1999, because it still looks like it is.

Maybe the 00s came upon us faster than we could keep up. There was so much press about a new century, new millennium and fears of a Y2K disaster that we just were not ready for a new look and new style. Most likely the 00s will be similar to 70s, which took a long time to shake off the hippie haze and Vietnam protest spirit of the 60s. After all it was not until 1976 that Punk, Disco and cocaine replaced free love, long hair and sit-ins.

Some potential shapers of the 00s are the digitalization of music through MP3 players like iPods, participatory journalism via blogs, and the war against terrorism. But they are still not enough to define it yet.

There is no better way to get your nostalgia fix on than by watching the ads that played in between your favorite cartoons from the Eighties like G.I. Joe and Inspector Gadget. Those ads, which were marketed at kids, became as well-known to you as characters on shows. Fruit Roll-Ups, the Keebler Elves, Chuck E. Cheese and He-Man were all your pals. It is actually kind of sad.

Ads from the 80s - scroll down the page and click {via ihaveanidea.org}

If you are too young to remember the Eighties, you can at least laugh at the hair styles and cheesy graphics.

Just when it was safe to show your wrist without a yellow "Live Strong" Lance Armstrong bracelet comes a new cause-related "fashion revolution" - the white wristband to end Third World debt and African hunger. Now-pregnant Supermodel Claudia Schiffer debuted the new look at a reception with UK Chancellor Gordon Brown. It will soon be worn by pop stars recording a new version of Band Aid's "Do They Know it's Christmas."

Will it catch on? Nope. This is a noble effort and will have visibility at award shows and fashion runways but not with the mainstream American public that embraced "Live Strong." Most likely this wristband and others that follow it (and there will be others) will be like the red ribbons worn to show support of AIDS research during the 1980s. Not mandatory fashion accessories, but well meant symbolism.

Claudia's Band of Hope {UK Sun}

Admit it, you are a cheap, bourgeoisie sellout that fakes being a hip modernist. Your lamps and tables are Ikea. Towels from Target. But you still make jokes about WalMart. Oh wait that just might be me!

In the realm of clever ad spoofs, "The Elite Designers Against Ikea" seems to hit the right mark. Creating an anti-movement against yourself is one way to enhance your authenticity. It gives your biggest fans a chance to defend you and others a reaffirmation of your cool credo.

The fake group of designers is led by "Van De Pup" an elite fashion bitch dedicated to decimating Ikea. From their mission statement: "The big blue place is odious, its affordable design is sickeningly shallow and we loathe it even more than we loathe football. Please join us in our unqualified hatred."

"Tivo" is now the primary word used for digitally capturing TV programming onto a digital video recorder (DVR) device. Since Tivo is a brand name, there needs to be a generic term that will stand the test of time. For VCRs, we used "tape" as in "I have that show on tape" or "I'm gonna tape that." It was never "I'll VCR this" or "Betamax that show," which are the direct equivalents of "Tivo."

This is not to say that "Tivo" as a term will go away, Xerox and Coke are still regularly used as stand-ins for their categories. Those categories however have names such as "cola" and "photocopy" that are part of our vocab. Is the right word going to simply be "record," which is a well-used word for capturing content of many types? Or does it need to be a modern, edgy term like "digi take"? There is no answer here; just a question which one day will have a no-duh answer.

P. Diddy, the mogul, rap star and Sean John designer, has been sporting the mohawk for some time now. At first, perhaps it was a nice tribute to Mr. T, or a way to show up those wimps that only go so far as the "faux-hawk." It was October of 2003 when the new Diddy do debuted, as he trained for running the New York Marathon. Seemed cool, like a way to symbolize the warrior spirit and psych himself up for the physical challenge. Since then there have been award shows, fashion runways and videos such as the latest "Vote or Die" spot with still the mohawk. It's been a whole year and time to change up Diddy.

Watch Where You Point That
Cellphones able to identify music heard at random

Don't you hate it when you hear a new song on the radio or at a club and don't know what it is? Cool new music tagging technology allows you to just point your cellphone towards the music and get instant info on the music. {Read More}

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