Jun 19 2010
I was surprised when I was at the bookstore and saw Norman Spinrad had come out with a new book.
It had been a while and I figured Norman was old and senile and probably wouldn’t write any more.
I was wrong.
He’s old. He’s not senile. He is more evil than ever, Praise the Lord.
He is even more handsome, it seems, than when he was younger:
Meet me below the flip and I’ll give you a review.
Feb 16 2008
If it isn’t sex, it’s women in trouble, honest!
I get frustrated at work sometimes … my fellow secretaries, although quite intelligent and good women, are not interested in politics and when they do take time from their busy lives, they are more interested in reading about sex, relationships, Brittney Spears, Paris Hilton, and for a while there Whitney Houston was a big topic. Oh … and now we also have Amy Winehouse.
What’s so compelling about these conversations? What is so fascinating about reading and then talking about celebrity women in trouble?
This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. But our lamestream media (h/t lasthorseman) has market tested these kinds of stories to a fine edge … and thus we will see a Brittney Spears story take precedence over the fact that America commits torture.
Read a book once by Norman Spinrad called Little Heroes about, among other things. the music industry.
In Spinrad’s not too distant future, a Los Angeles based monolithic music corporation called MUZAK has pretty much taken control of commercial music.
Muzak’s employee pool is made up of creative music-and-visual tech wizards coopted into the corporation so they won’t be competition –“voxbox” players who can reproduce any kind of sound or voice, image engineers, etc.
They also have hired masses of market testers.
The corporate heads (or “the pinheads upstairs” as Spinrad’s character, Gloriana O’Toole, calls ’em) decided with glee that they should create a completely artificial rock star and thus rid themselves of their pain in the ass human ones who cost so much money and are so ill behaved and arrogant.
It’s a great book, and I recommend it to anyone.