Hold on. Wait a minute. People in the arts are waiting on tables while practicing their craft? It's one of those issues that makes you realize how screwed up the world can be. Fusion:
I know, I know - it's so unfair it makes you question everything you know about the moral arc of the universe. The author knows what it's like, too - check out this ciriculum vitae: "Nobody knows all this better than me. I'm 27 years old and have been building an online following for 10 years, beginning with a popular Livejournal I wrote in high school." Some examples of the peculiar disconnect between social-media fame and the real world: "The high highs and low lows leave me reeling. One week, I was stopped for photos six times while perusing comic books in downtown LA. The next week, I sat faceless in a room of 40 people vying for a menial courier job." That's right: there's not necessarily any money in social media fame. This requries tough choices:
"This is making me sad," she said as she took stock of her future job options at a Starbucks in Sherman Oaks. "I have to do YouTube at this point. I have to succeed." Well, good luck to them all. I'm still chewing over this sentence: "Although she has a degree in digital media, part-time social media gigs are hard to come by."
Don't know which is more illustrative of this weightless era: a degree in digital meda, or the idea of a part-time social media job.
MOVIES Oh, the ursinity: the Leo - Bear story is back, and verified. Key quote from DiCaprio: "You can feel the intimacy of both man and beast, you feel the sweat and the heat coming off the animal. It almost awakens another sense in you as an audience member and you feel like some voyeuristic animal watching something that you shouldn't be watching."
FAKE Bless the debunkers. Matt Novak guides you through 76 pictures passed around this year by credulous people or link-strumpets. Among the list you'll find a link to @PicPedant, a Twitter account described this: "Punctilious internet killjoy at the forefront of the New Debunkonomy. Obsessed with attribution & Photoshop." Particular attention is paid to cute anthropomorphic frogs, which really aren't having fun at all.
ARCHITORTURE This doesn't begin promisingly: "If, as some contend, architecture is really just a priapic parlour game, then Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin is the equivalent of short-man-in-a-sports-car syndrome." It's about Corbu's plan to level Paris and put up some miserable towers. If you're new to the subject, it'll fill you in. But there's this:
Possibly, but the architecture didn't help. Here's a WaPo piece on "A poetic vision of Paris's crumbling suburban high-rises." Those are the better ones.
