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| What
is this site for?
Watching the
world go by provides a lot to think about. For those
that like to keep track of pop culture and trends,
this is for you. You could consider this a "blog,"
but I think of blogs as mostly diary entries: "Why
won't Jane call me back? I'm like so upset."
Not here. This is a point of view site aimed at our
society.
To get beyond
this being a vanity site of any kind, the goal of
Culture Drift is to entertain and inform. I plan to
tackle tough societal questions such as will we ever
have a President
with a facial hair again and are Ugg
boots really sexy? But I'll also keep you
up to date on the latest happenings on "The Simple
Life," which you know is so damn important.
Who
Am I?
My name is
Chip Ross. And I live in West L.A. I grew up in New
Orleans and Denver, went to CU-Boulder and then moved
to San Francisco and for the last three here. This
is not my full-time job, but I do my best to keep
things current.
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What
kind of stuff is on this site?
Reviews and
points of view across the arts, culture and news.
Special features to check out are:
New
Music Reviews
Monthly
Music Picks
"Watching
Shit Happen"™ Reports
The
TV Blog (@ MediaVillage.com)
Bookmark this
site and come back every day. Updates are often.
Send emails
to chip@culturedrift.com
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| More
about Me and Writing
For many years
I forgot how to write. Illiteracy or early Alzheimer’s
was not to blame. Just a lengthy time spent in a creative
wilderness, a left-brained haze of exams, classes
and the beginning of a career. Only recently have
I returned to the sense of wordplay, expression and
storytelling that were a large part of my childhood.
At age seven,
I wanted to make my own version of Mad magazine.
This led to writing and drawing comic books where
I would satirize current movies and songs, making
them about people in my life: my sister, the weird
kids at school and the Mormon neighbors to name a
few. Then at 13, I wrote a sequel to “The Terminator,”
which conveniently had a role for a pre-teen cyborg,
which I thought could be me once the film rights were
sold. This was 1986, long before we had a computer
or the actual sequels to “The Terminator.”
I used an early word processor with whiteout error
corrections and mailed it into the film’s distributor.
I never heard a word from them. I also crafted a Soap
Opera (“Briggs Garden, USA”) with 20 years
of potential plotlines and confusing family trees,
and later forged an attempt at the absurdist whimsy
of “Monty Python” or “The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy.”
Then after
age 15, there was nothing. Just assigned writings
from classes. I read a lot though. I learned to feel
words and to respect great authors, and even dreamt
of being one, but felt no urge to get started right
away. That was either laziness or pot. But I have
shaken off the cobwebs and through several writing
courses and last year the creation of Culture Drift,
I am writing again.
I like fiction
writing and journalism and want a future for myself
in both: Articles and books about trends, pop culture
and human nature, but with the occasional zippy bit
of fiction that is either highly-stylized or slightly
strange. Time will tell.
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The
TV Blog
 I
recently started to write a blog for another site, Media
Village,
which is run by Jack
Myers. Media Village is all
about TV, with analysis, predictions, thoughts
and interviews with industry professionals. I
am one of a handful of bloggers (I hate that
term) and for me it is a fresh new outlet for
writing. The blog is called "Culture Drift," like
this site. But it differs in its tight focus
on TV, and a more immediate and random form of
content. From time to time material may run on
both sites, but for the most part I plan to have
a church/state divide. Check it often, there
is link to the left of the page here which will
bring you there.
Culture
Drift: The TV Blog
Culture
Drift for Kids
Debut of Hip-Hop Teen Magazine
 Dec.
4 - I have been working with
a new magazine, Club Teen Seen billed
as America's first hip-hop teen magazine. The
December issue has lots from me, including the cover
story on The Game, a profile of
Missy Elliot and several CD reviews. I am also
in charge of a recurring column called "Hip-Hop
Hollywood" that matches the tone found on
this site. Pretty much smart-ass and superficial.
I have loved R&B and hip-hop since I was
a kid, which may surprise some. Writing about
the urban scene is a nice departure from TV,
indie rock, trends and the topics covered on
Culture Drift. So far, so good. The Club
Teen Seen publishers tell me that some readers
actually think that I am black. I'm not even
a whigger, so I take that as a compliment.
Club
Teen Seen [Under Construction]
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