Cool hunting

Cool Hunting

I should probably start off, somewhere near the beginning, by saying that I hate really dislike almost everything that modernity has produced. The golden age of creativity has passed and almost everything ‘today’ feels like ‘a simulacra of a simulacra of a simulacra’, to paraphrase one of William Gibsons seminal characters, the great Cayce Pollard (a favorite literary character of mine and a ‘professional’ cool hunter).

Coolhunting is a neologism coined in the early 1990s referring to a new kind of marketing professionals who make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing “cool” cultural fads and trends.

Completely NOT what this page is about. But I’m also of the opinion that the term neologisms can be (and maybe should be) misused and abused. This might be more akin to the preservation (in a mounting it on your wall sense) of all the things that I once thought were cool. While paying homage to the aforementioned miss Pollard.

Obviously the perception of coolness lives very much in the perception of the beholder…

Dog experts tell us that dogs don’t naturally enjoy being hugged; they suffer through it. A lot of misery in the world – and a lot of bad birthday presents – exists because we understand other people people by using ourselves as a model. This doesn’t offend me, so I assume it doesn’t offend you. I like this, so I assume you do too. And sometimes we get it wrong. As the Latin maxim goes, ‘De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum’

–Against Empathy, Paul Bloom

… and because I am a curmudgeon (psychologically if not physically… yet), at least in terms of cinema, these days I live almost exclusively in a realm of Youtube, documentaries, claymation and animation (preferably non-US). So this might just end up being a niche list of the aforementioned.

Mises versus Marx – Arguably the greatest rap battle of all time.

A coping mechanism – to fortify your fragile bulwark against the Monday morning suck.

Chop Suey – Great cover. Girl crush.

One night in Tokyo – Bringing the nostalgia back