Sony took away digital movies that people paid for. Streaming services keep raising rates. Amazon bricked old Kindles.
Sounds like the LA Clippers broke salary cap rules. Sports teams use tax payer money to build stadiums. Billionaires and VC just bought the Lakers, I guess. See also, The American Sports Plutocracy Is Bullshit.
People will start turning their backs on all this.
Back to buying books, borrowing movies from the library, going to local sporting events. I can see movie rental places coming back. Hobby shops.
A collective act of turning our backs on the whole corporatized entertainment industry. Playing board games instead of video games. Hosting dinners for friends and neighbors. More pick up games.
“What do all men with power want,” asks the Oralce. “More power.”
Modern top tier entertainment can’t stop. It must seek growth and profit while draining the very soul and joy from everything we fell in love with in the first place.
“In most cities, convenience stores are never too far away, but have you ever seen one floating on water? Moored in the Harbour Square Park Basin on Toronto’s Lake Ontario, a fully stocked shop called Global Convenience is turning the familiar bodega into something far less accessible, and that’s exactly the point. It invites visitors to think about daily rituals, accessibility, and the ways we interact with the urban environment.”
What’s better “marketing” than this? Screaming fans, tender moments, so many smiles – who wouldn’t want to be on that train ride, you know?
And the fun part is this; you don’t need to be as big as Hayley Williams to live this. To be this. Today, make your magic, put it into the world. Big, small, doesn’t matter, it all counts.
“I don’t know. You don’t know. Don’t try to know. Just make art that excites you, and make enough of it that you eventually make work that resonates with people.”
From Raj Kaur, “Blue is immortalised in my sketchbook, from a session with wonderful Beth Spencer.”
I submitted a photograph as source material for Beth’s online drawing session, and this is from Raj’s sketchbook. I took the file and sent it to a local printer, and they made me a nice print.
Tonight, a friend walked me around their space, showing me the works of art left to her. A precious, sweet remembrance of a dear friend.
Tomorrow, I drive to upstate New York to visit an aunt in the hospital. She’s not an artist by definition, but she made people laugh and smile. What else is art but joy?
Remember the laughter, the smiles, the experences along the way. Celebrate the sunset, the dinner together, the conversations that flow like music into the evening.
Love these two still images from Noah Kalina’s ‘Out in the Field – Comparing the Phase One IQ360 with the IQ4150’ video on YouTube, on his new Kalina channel.
I sure don’t know much about Phase One cameras, or medium format, but I love following his work, and the epic scenery he captures.
From the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” manager Jon Landau explaining the release to the label exec
“I’m not asking for your understanding, and I’m not here to explain Bruce’s thinking or justify his artistic choices. I am here to make sure the album is released precisely the way he wants, that’s it.
Whether or not you believe in this particular album, in this office, my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.”
This movie rattled me in a few ways, but this is the part I carry in my mission going back to 2001, that being, “I just wanna help my friends in band’s sell albums.”
This mission has changed over the years, notably to, “I just wanna help bands sell albums” when I helped launch Noise Creep at AOL Music in 2008. In 2021, when I launched Heavy Metal Email, a newsletter to help heavy bands return to email lists and websites as a way to regain a direct connection with fans, to 2023 when I renamed it as Social Media Escape Club, my mission is broader, “I just wanna help creative people make their work.”
It’s not quite so noble, more selfish than anything. I just wanted to see my friends in bands, or people I looked up to, I just wanted them to keep putting out their music, and keep this great big circus going – the artists who painted album covers, photographers who took band photos, the journalists who wrote about rock and roll.
I just wanna help creative people do their thing, and to do that thing they need to be able to let their fans know when they’ve got a new art exhibit, a new album to promote, a new book to order, and that’s becoming harder on social media in 2026.
So yes, I think simple email lists and websites make that work, just like post cards and tube amps and print flyers still work in the year 2026. Because it’s people, not platforms. It’s DIY venues filled with weirdos and punks and freaks that will outlast the “too big to fail” monoliths.
I’m not asking for your understanding, or to justify these artistic choices. Whether or not you believe any of this, I believe in the art.
