Sunday Sermon : The Exorcist | The Cultural Impact (1974 mini-Documentary)

Hi-Shredability: Craig R. Stecyk III

This Blows My Mind

Skateboarding history in Culture . . .

When A 60-something Feminist Artist [Beat Down] Overgrown [Wannabe] Skaters

I make it clear over the years that the brand discussed in this article is on my shit list. In fact no one is allowed to come into one of my exhibitions if they are wearing anything with the name on their person or board. Nor will I photograph anyone no matter how talented if they are supporting this bullshit brand. They have stolen from me and other artists and friends. They are the antithesis of cool, they are SHIT.



from The CUT

I Think About This a Lot:
When a 60-Something Feminist Artist Dragged Overgrown Skaters
By Kat Stoeffel

The best insult I’ve ever heard came out of one of the most trivial news stories I’ve ever followed.

The story involves the cult skatewear line Supreme, in the years before it was fashion-relevant, back when it was just an expensive hobby for rich teens and cool dads.

Important historical context: Before Supreme partnered with Louis Vuitton, it ripped them off. In 2000, Louis Vuitton sent Supreme a cease-and-desist letter when their trademark showed up on skateboards. So did other entities whose logos Supreme used on hoodies and jackets, such as the NHL and the NCAA.

These days, Supreme doesn’t steal, it collaborates. But intellectual property theft is in its DNA. The white Futura on a red box logo is “inspired” by 72-year-old artist Barbara Kruger, who uses an identical text treatment to collage anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian maxims over 1950s advertising-style black-and-white photographs.

In May of 2013 — decades after Supreme started slinging T-shirts with a bootleg Kruger logo — Kruger made her opinion of Supreme known. The circumstances of this event involve in-group drama that is tedious to recount — an ouroboros of cringe. But the outcome was one of the sickest burns since “virgin who can’t drive,” so bear with me.

A rival clothing company run by young women was selling hypebeast parody items, beanies that said “Supreme Bitch” and the like. Supreme tolerated Supreme Bitch until they tried to trademark “Supreme Bitch,” at which point Supreme sued the makers of* Supreme Bitch for $10 million for stealing the logo Supreme stole from another woman. The whole thing made me want to look away. Thank god I didn’t, because Foster Kamer, an editor for Complex at the time, had the good sense to ask Kruger (the Ur-bitch?) for a comment.

Kruger’s response was a blank email with a Microsoft Word document attached, file name “fools.doc.” What fools.doc contained gave me the words to understand the Supreme v. Supreme Bitch feud. It also gave me the tools to analyze the many inconsequential imbroglios that would follow.

“What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” Kruger wrote. “I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”

I think about fools.doc about once a week. The absence of digital niceties in Kruger’s statement sends a chill of awe down my spine. My own file names have since become tributes to its evocative brevity (bummer$$.xls, doneforever.pdf).

But mostly, I think about “what a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” because it is a perfect insult. Kruger didn’t call Supreme thieves or Supreme Bitch opportunists and, in her amusement and restraint, did more damage than the most hyperbolic flame war. Engaging with petty drama is a way of validating it. WARCOTUJ dismisses an entire situation without even bothering to differentiate the players.

Husband’s tribute to curvy wife sparks backlash?

Animal shelter slams Lena Dunham’s abused dog farewell post?

Ted Cruz staffer faves porn tweet?

You don’t need an opinion, all you need are eight words: “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers.” Repeat and keep scrolling.

WARCOTUJ is equally useful in one’s personal life. I think of it when a minor workplace conflict devolves into reply-all hell (“just jumping in here … ”) or when a party I wasn’t invited to turns into an Instagram photo shoot. I thought it of myself one recent Saturday morning, when I waited in line (in 90-degree heat with no cover) for an indie, luxury-candle sample sale.

On a deeper level, I love WARCOTUJ because it’s a feminist critique of Supreme. Supreme’s use of logos isn’t an earnest, Adbusters-style commentary or a clever fashion world send-up à la Comme des Fuckdown. Call it a ripoff, an homage, or a collaboration, Supreme’s style of straight-up appropriation is evasive. It’s a way of signifying something without actually coming out and saying anything.

Supreme relies on obscurity to retain an aura of cool — sending hypebeasts racing to prove they “get” its references. Kruger’s popularity, meanwhile, is a function of her legibility. Lines like “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” transform the appropriation of familiar images from a commentary for the benefit of other art-world insiders into something accessibly meaningful and politically powerful.

Kruger’s quotability feels inextricable from her being a woman artist. At least, it doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that so many prominent female artists — Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Tracey Emin — use text in their art. Or that after a female celebrity turns 50, she becomes a beacon of DGAF candor. If you can’t count on being heard, you can’t risk being misunderstood.

I don’t want to jinx it, but it does suddenly feel like they’re being heard. Holzer’s “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” has become a rallying cry in the art world’s reckoning with its own Weinsteins. Kruger, meanwhile, is headlining the performance-art fair Performa 17, and her pieces all seem designed to mimic Supreme. In addition to a Kruger “takeover” of a Lower East Side skatepark and a Kruger Soho pop-up shop (billed as a performance) with around-the-block lines and strict item limits, the MTA is releasing a limited-edition line of MetroCards printed with her provocative questions — a better version of a stunt Supreme pulled earlier this year.

So you can find me at one of the four subway stops said to have Kruger cards, waiting in line with all the other fangirls, trying all the machines, messing up your commute. You know what to do. Say to yourself — what a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers — and walk on by.

SUPREME: WE FOLD SHIRTS WELL

THIEVES OF CULTURE, MAKING SUCKERS OUT OF ANYONE WHO WEARS THEIR PRODUCT OR COVETS THE BRAND: SUCKERS



also from ARTSY : I Went to Barbara Kruger’s First-Ever Performance—and Left with a Skateboard

Chain and The Gang to start your weekend

BONUS:

Show Me Your Soul: The Soul Train Years

from Dangerous Minds:

Show Me Your Soul: The Soul Train Years is a 2013 documentary produced for French television by filmmaker Pascal Forneri (who also directed the critically-acclaimed 2010 documentary Gainsbourg & his Girls). It uses wonderful rare footage, archival photographs, and brand new interviews to take the very first in-depth look at the history of Soul Train. Forneri not only highlights the amazing soul and R&B artists who performed on the program over its 35 year, 1,100 episode run, but also the real stars of the show: the in-studio dancers who would set the standard for future generations of contemporary urban dance.

Several recurring Soul Train dancers are spotlighted in this documentary who provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the show came together. Most of the dancers were not professionally trained, they would spend hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets to fly themselves out to Hollywood from cities all over the U.S. to be on the show. Those determined few who didn’t make the cut at the audition would sneak themselves onto the studio lot by any means necessary: including one dancer who got onto the set by hiding himself in the trunk of a car. As the show’s popularity in American households increased, so did the dancer’s popularity: week after week they’d try to outdo one another. First by their dance moves which became more and more wild, then by their fashion choices. Some dancers were so eager to get in front of the camera that they started bringing in props (a man known as “Mr. X” became famous for his dance routine that included a large, oversized toothbrush). Dancers began getting recognized on the streets of their home cities as if they were veritable celebrities.

Visionary host Don Cornelius always stated that Soul Train was a home for soul artists regardless of their race, and featured a long list of white artists who appealed to black audiences: Gino Vannelli, David Bowie, Beastie Boys, Elton John, Teena Marie, Hall & Oates, Pet Shop Boys, and Spandau Ballet were amongst the many white artists who appeared on the program over the years. As music trends slowly began to change, Don Cornelius struggled to keep Soul Train true to his original vision. When disco went mainstream, Cornelius made sure the show focused on only the most soulful disco artists that were being played on the radio. When rap music went commercial, however, Cornelius could not hide his contempt for the genre and made it very clear from the beginning that he wouldn’t get behind hip hop. Forneri documents this well, showing footage of Cornelius hanging his head in disgust following a performance by Public Enemy. As he slowly approaches Chuck D. and Flavor Fav for an interview he begins with a very long pause, and then exclaims, “That was frightening.” In the middle of a Kurtis Blow interview, Cornelius awkwardly admits on television “It’s so much fun, I mean, it doesn’t make sense to old guys like me. I don’t understand why they love it so much but that ain’t my job is it? My job is to deal with it and we’re dealing with it,” which was followed by uncomfortable laughter from the studio audience.

Show Me Your Soul: The Soul Train Years is currently up on YouTube in its entirety. If you don’t understand French then you’ll just have to enjoy the amazing footage. Peace, love, and soul!

the School of Life: Cultural Mining

One of the Greatest Sub Culture Documentaries Ever Made: STYLE WARS

At the time I saw this on PBS in 1983/4 it was one of the most inspiring things I'd seen.

Seven Anecdotes from a Photographer of Vanishing Cultures

via Boing Boing

Jimmy Nelson is a legendary photographer of humanity. He shares seven insights gleaned from his 48-year career, each one backed up with an interesting anecdote about how he got better at his craft.

From peeing the bed in a Mongolian tent in the dead of winter, to seeing his own reflection in the eyes of his subjects, Jimmy shares some fascinating tidbits of hard-earned wisdom about art and connecting with others.

• 7 Lessons I Learnt From Photography (feat. Jimmy Nelson) via Cooperative of Photography

Japanese Department Store May Want to Look Up the Word 'Fucking'

from Gawkwer:

If only we could have sat in on the meeting where the marketing team for this Osaka department store came up with the idea for their "Fuckin' Sale," spotted early this month by a reader of Jake Adelstein's Japan Subculture blog.

-There should be some cool English words on these signs.
-How about "Fuckin' Sale?"
-What's that mean?
-Fuckin' means, like, really good. So it's a really good sale.
-And there's no other meaning to "fuckin'? Nothing at all that might embarrass us on the internet? Remember what happened with our Save-a-Shit-Ton promotion…


UPDATE:

Mortified Japanese Department Store Cleans Up 'Fuckin Sale'

Ian Svenonius is (still) the most interesting man in Washington DC

from The Washington Post

Local punk music icon and author Ian Svenonius will discuss his newest book on Tuesday. (Photo by Linda Davidson / The Washington Post)
Ian Svenonius has led an incredible string of bands over the years — Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up, Chain and the Gang — but the D.C. punk frontman’s bibliography is slowly catching up with his discography.

If you’re smart enough to have made room for his work on your shelves, Svenonius might consider you an ally in the fight against Apple’s cloud-based “anti-stuff” ideology. As he writes in his latest book, “The hit TV show ‘Hoarders’ (A&E) identifies people with things as socially malignant, grotesque, primitive, dirty, bizarre. In a word: poor. Apple has turned the world upside down in making possessions a symbol of poverty and having nothing as a signifier of wealth and power.”

[Ian Svenonius, the most interesting man in rock-and-roll]

That kind of anti-authoritarian, half-winking intelligence fills every page of “Censorship Now!!,” Svenonius’s newest collection of essays. To answer your first question, yes, he really argues for censorship in hopes that it will “stop the radio from spewing its vomit” and prevent the mainstream media from creating “a fantasy version of world events and the intellectual framework for mass murder.” And to answer your second question, yes, he is serious — but also maybe not, in that Svenonius’s writing always has blended academic bluster and conspiracy theory into a sophisticated and singular brand of satire that ultimately points toward the truth.

And while putting a copy of this book on your nightstand would be a sign of good taste, who cares about good taste? Are you willing to be seen reading a book titled “Censorship Now!!” in public? If so, your skin might burn with funny glances from squares, scolds and looky-loos. But on the inside, you’ll feel your brain throbbing as it swells to accommodate some hilarious, absurd and radical new strategies on how to live in our ridiculous world.

Stecyk - Word.

My man C.R. Stecyk III

people finally catching up

or trying to

no one will...



Craig and i shot by Ed Templeton earlier in 2015

Why Not Tuesday? Check this DOPEBill Withers Live from 1973

thanks, InsidePlaya and Beats1 music

Is rap the most important music since 1960? Scientists say they have proof - CNN

from CNN:

(CNN)Forget The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the most important development in pop music in the past half century is hip-hop.

That's not an opinion, it's fact -- backed up by hard data, says a team of researchers from two London universities.

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers say they threw out "musical lore and aesthetic judgment" in favor of scientific rigor.

"We had a sense that lots of people have opinions about popular music, but nobody has any objective evidence," said Armand Leroi, one of the study's authors.

Opinions vs. evidence
To gather that evidence, they used music recognition technology -- similar to what's in the apps SoundHound and Shazam -- to analyze more than 17,000 songs that made up 86% of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 between 1960 and 2010.

The researchers took 30-second clips of each song and broke them down into topics relating to harmony and timbre, like "major chords without changes" and "guitar, loud, energetic."

Teaming up with the Internet music site Last.fm, the researchers then studied how the different topics fit into different genres and styles, and how their popularity rose and fell over the decades.

"Everybody thinks the best music was produced when they were 17 years old. We wanted to do something better than that," Leroi, a professor of evolutionary biology at Imperial College London, told CNN.

Pop music became more diverse, not less
Here are some of the most interesting findings of the study:

• The rise of rap music and related genres appears to be "the single most important event that has shaped the musical structure of the American charts" in the period the research covered.

• Despite talk of a "British invasion," bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones didn't set off the revolution in American music in 1964. But they did benefit from it and "fanned its flames."

• Although many people complain that pop music has gotten more and more samey, diversity actually increased in the '80s and '90s as hip-hop emerged and flourished. The researchers said they found "no evidence for the progressive homogenization of music in the charts."

• The low point for variety was in the early 1980s, when genres like new wave, disco and hard rock dominated.

Books, paintings are next
Leroi said he expects this study -- which he worked on with Matthias Mauch from Queen Mary University of London -- to be the first of many in an emerging field examining the evolution of different cultures through data.

People are already applying similar methods to digitized books, he said, and paintings are also likely to be fair game through image recognition technology.

"We will be able to reconstruct the history of art and develop a mathematical theory of its evolution, just as scientists have done for the history of life," Leroi said.

But he acknowledges there are some aspects of culture that the technology can't reach -- at least for now.

"What we can't do with a computer is understand the meaning of the music to us," he said.

'Innovations of funk'
The impact of hip-hop cannot be under-estimated, said music journalist Dorian Lynskey. "It redefines what counts as a pop song and what elements you can use: the rapping on one level takes you away from the need for vocal melodies, while the production on the other is more about loops than chords and sampling.

"Hip-hop us a realization of how James Brown saw music, which is that it's about the beats and grooves rather than chords and harmonies. It's the realization of the innovations of funk."

he study by the researchers also identified three key years in which music evolved the most: 1964, 1983 and 1991. Lynskey said that for him, the last of these three years was the most exciting. "I think 1991 was such a diverse year for albums: You have 'Achtung Baby' by U2, which is the sound of a big mainstream stadium act radically overhauling its sound, you've got 'Nevermind' (Nirvana) which sees alternative underground music suddenly becoming a big seller, continuing to this day.

"Then there are these genre-mixing albums, 'Screamadelica' (Primal Scream), 'Foxbase Alpha' (St. Etienne) and 'Blue Lines' (Massive Attack) which are all empowered by sampling and new technology, and the idea that your record collection can be edited and merged to form something new. Along with 'Loveless' by My Bloody Valentine -- these albums are not just collections of classic songs, they're about experiments and expanding the parameters -- those records spawned so much."

’What Every Child Needs To Know About Punk Rock’ is a real children’s book that actually exists

from Dangerous Minds

The Ramones’ 40th anniversary celebration just happened at Bowery Electric last weekend, and the last living original member of the band died, aged 65, just a couple of months short of being able to attend. Punk rock is OLD, and yet, through generations, it persists. As ways for a kid to rebel go, punk has been extraordinarily durable and flexible. Its most basic and superficial tropes were long ago rendered cartoonish or outright mainstreamed, but the defiant outlook they express is eternal.



Eh, why not? It’d beat them turning Juggalo.

>The very idea of punk as a staid cultural institution, let alone toddler-book fodder, might be met with wounded howls of opposition from some circles—as it should be—but again, 40 years. There are OG punks who are grandparents now. I have an 11-year-old Godson who spent his infancy decked out in Ramones and DK’s onesies. So as weird and implausible as a children’s book frankly explaining punk may sound at first blush, one could make a case that by now, it’s pretty well overdue. What Every Child Needs To Know About Punk Rock was released about a week before the Ramones’ 40th anniversary show, and it’s actually kind of awesome. I’ll let these spreads speak for themselves.





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The book is credited on the cover to “Brad and Marc.” Sounds pretty casual, but both of them are highly credentialed.  Marc is researcher and healthcare analyst Marc Engelsgjerd, and Brad is child behavior expert R. Bradley Snyder. The two have co-authored several books in this series, penning What Every Child Needs To Know About board books on a topics as trivial as pizza and coffee, and as serious as cancer and the economy. I can think of a few adults in pretty dire need of that last one.



Click to enlarge

Spreads reproduced with permission from Need to Know Publishing

Once upon a time in New York

A comparison of old and new, New York.

The Birth of Youth Culture uncovered in a new doc TEENAGE

I was invited to a preview of the new "Documentary" TEENAGE. Here's a couple of things about the film that I didn't know, when it began, as I ate my popcorn, in the private screening room. First of all it's an incredibly enlightening, interesting and good looking film, based on a few of the narratives in Jon Savage's TEENAGE: The creation of Youth Culture. While I find the tagline "Rebellion Never Gets Old" a bit disingenuous, It uses excellent and authentic archival footage from the beginning of the twentieth century, up to the end of World War II in 1945. Then in it's conclusion, where they show a few fleeting seconds of a few highlights of the decades to follow, that's it. So don't get your hopes up waiting for something you are familiar with, because it's likely you won't know anything of the history that is presented so well in the film.

Other than that, the main drawback, confusion, or illusion that disturbed me was the liberties the director took with "re-creation and dramatizing" the narrative stories told by some of Savage's actual interviewees. While indeed compelling, the re-enactments, as good as they were, and as close as you can get to making them match film quality, were obviously shot recently. The hair styles, mannerisms, and camera work made this "new" footage both apparent and bothersome, as if it were an 'Instagram' effect. It was annoying to several of us in the theater, and we brought it up to the director in the Q&A afterword. He rationalized that it was his story to tell in his film and that's just how he does it. He had no qualms at all in mixing all that incredible archival footage with his re-enactments, in my opinion this detracted from the overall credibility of the film. But honestly, now that i've told you that there is some "fake" footage in the movie, knowing in advance, it shouldn't bother you too much. But not knowing as i watched distracted me over and over. It's has both good stories and good history and it's good looking, and it's beyond anything you've seen from this time in the history of youth culture. So now that you know some of the vignettes are re-enactments, you won't have to second guess if the director is trying to get over on you, you should enjoy this film even more than i did. Very worth checking out when it opens March 14th in New York, and moves around the country after that. Go here for the full schedule of theaters and screenings internationally.

'Beat this!: a Hip-Hop History'. The 1984 Hip Hop documentary film.

The History of Movie Popcorn

from Boing Boing

Popcorn really took off in North America in the mid-1880s, but it would take 50 years for it to become a favorite food at movie theaters. According to Andrew Smith, author of Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn, "movie theaters wanted nothing to do with popcorn because they were trying to duplicate what was done in real theaters. They had beautiful carpets and rugs and didn’t want popcorn being ground into it.” Then the Great Depression happened and movies took off as popular cheap entertainment. Popcorn vendors set up outside to provide an equally cheap snack. By the early 1930s, a Kansas City entrepreneur named Julia Braden convinced theaters to allow her to bring her popcorn kiosk into the theater. Of course, eventually the theaters established their own concession stands. This week, both Smithsonian and the New York Times looked at the history of movie popcorn.

"Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?" (Smithsonian)

Who Made Movie Popcorn? (NYT)

Against Tipping by Ian Svenonius

from JACOBIN / a magazine of culture and polemic

So long as the karmic tip jar clouds our perceptions, the insane injustice of an underpaid labor force reimbursed through only the guilty feelings of their coworkers will persist.





When you’re traveling, it’s easy to see the origins of modern tipping. A tipped service in a foreign land is typically performed by someone who is not an employee of an establishment but works either as an adjunct or as a free agent — a shoeshine boy, for instance. In a “third-world” city, a self-styled tour guide might be tipped in return for leading a group of sightseers. In Italy, a Neapolitan street urchin might offer to protect a parked car in return for a gratuity.

In both cases, the inference is clear: if you don’t employ me, I will hurt you. This thinly veiled extortion is the subtext to much tipping: if the propertied individual doesn’t comply with the demands of the semi-employed, something terrible might happen to them or their things. So tipping began essentially as a way to stave off violence by the indigent, forgotten people; it is a social contract adhered to by the privileged class who fear and disdain the less fortunate and are aware of the failure of their own class to create equity.

But tipping in the United States is something more nuanced. The people who are tipped in the US comprise an ever-expanding number of employed professions. Employers recognize the tipped individual as a great boon to the business: someone who needn’t be given benefits, a living wage, or employment security. They are essentially a guest at the company who must comport themselves appropriately for monetary reward, courtesy of the customer. And this reward can be large. The tip, though it is a ghost fee, is actually a fairly strict amount — 15 to 20 percent of a tab, $1 per drink — and is essentially mandatory; a failure to pay will result in public shaming or even fisticuffs. The tipping scale varies wildly and is determined by race and class factors. Cute young white people are often given the desirable, highly visible jobs that tip well at restaurants and bars, while Central American immigrants work for trickle-down tips in the back.

In the United States, one is required to tip one’s waiter, bartender, taxi driver, bellhop, barista, sandwich artist, valet parker, coat-check, hairdresser, barber, driver, masseuse, pedicurist, strip-tease artist, dogwalker, hotel maid, concierge, and so on. A tipped job is typically one that is tied to a very quantifiable service done for a particular person or group. It is often linked to the idea of a “luxury” service as well (an espresso could be made at home, so you must tip if you are buying it while out). In this sense, it is maintained by the consumer as a guilt fee.

Meanwhile, a bus driver on a daily route will not be tipped, for example, though he or she is working hard to serve the public. Policemen are not tipped except in the form of donations by ass-kissers to the “fraternal order” in exchange for a sticker that is supposed to confer preferential treatment by officers. Public servants are not tipped. The tipped individual is providing a personal, private service.

Luxury service is therefore the crux. Tipping is the onus of the purchaser who pays the wage of the worker on top of the cost of whatever service provided, which goes to the business itself.

If one ever tries to discuss tipping in America, one is immediately met with a dismissive and lofty: “Well, I tip really well because I was/am part of the service industry.” Like veterans of the armed forces, the “service people” are bound together in a cult whose members have experienced the true nature of work servitude and the demeaning, harrowing experience it represents. The fellow warrior conspicuously tips well in a great display of homage and respect. Service implies a subservience but also a noble sacrifice. The service industry workers prepare our sandwiches nobly, submitt­ing to our personalized mayonnaise requests. Almost all Americans have worked in the service industry at some point and many will only ever work in it.

Tipping for these service-industry comrades is outside of money. It is an alm or genuflection; a gesture of humility to the tippee designed to recognize and rehabilitate the degrading nature of their work, and also to connect with them spiritually. The camaraderie and smile dispensed by the waitstaff on receiving a generous tip after a suspenseful meal service brings the light of spiritual nourishment to the tipper, who can rest well that night. The Neapolitan street urchin’s implied violence still hovers over the interaction, but now the justice and retribution feels more karmic.

Just as oblations to the poor will puff up one’s sense of self, “tipping well” — 20 percent or more — is a measure of one’s personal decency. People often boast of their tipping. The least attractive thing one could do in the US is tip stingily. That is for old, religious people or clueless foreigners. Conversely, if one leaves a tip at a coffee bar in parts of Europe, the barista looks insulted and confused, as if you were treating him or her as a beggar; are you some kind of playboy show-off who throws his money around? Obviously, these people have never seen the Scorsese film Goodfellas, which portrays mafiosi in the sixties tipping wildly in a display of rampant virility.

People fall over themselves to brag of their tipping prowess and, despite the inherent and obvious injustice of a massive, scarcely-paid workforce scraping and begging for a wage, there has yet to be a true revolt of tipped employees. In a lottery-minded, American Idol culture, workers are loath to give up the chance for a Saudi Sheik to tip them a million dollars as reward for preparing a great smoothie. And there are palpable dividends; tattooed bartenders are bad-boy sex symbols that determine who gets served and when. Their management gives them an allotment of courtesy drinks which they can hand out to high-tipping customers or prospective lovemaking partners. Their favor is therefore highly sought by bar-goers due to their high-handed, undemocratic authority.

Tipping therefore has many purposes besides being an exploitive business model. It either shows affinity for comrades in the service industry, or is a duty done reluctantly by the bourgeoisie to stave off insurrection. It absolves sins and wrongdoing, so it’s religious. It is a guilt fee paid by the ill-conscienced for the immoral act of indulging in luxury. It is an act of dominance as it displays power through capital, and also an act of submission — a paid tribute offered to the service person. All of this is erotic and exciting, which accounts for the huge popularity of tipping.

Tipping makes us into slaves and masters simultaneously in a confused, kinetic, and highly kinky social model. The service industry model carries over into the bedroom with the modern emphasis on oral sex and “servicing” one’s partner. And it is cross-cultural; the service industry accounts for most jobs in the post-industrial West — up to 80 percent in the US, a country that has exported most of its industry to cheaper places and mechanized its farms. In fact, the United States, more than most nations, is almost entirely dualistic; on one hand there is the bourgeoisie or “middle class,” and on the other, the service industry.

But even this binary is blurry. Middle-class is a designation worn by all Americans, except possibly some rappers who claim to be rich. Warren Buffett, for example, likely calls himself middle-class. Politicians pander to a mythic middle class in their stump speeches. In the United States, middle-class has been stripped of its old meaning (owners of capital, wealthy, propertied non-aristocrats) and come to mean someone who is positioned in the middle, between the very richest person and the very poorest person. All but two people in America are middle-class.

Of course, the defining idea of a middle class is not really one’s bank balance but instead a set of values. It is a social group with concern for the results of their actions. “Middle-class” was an insult during a more class-conscious era, grumbled in France with proletarian disdain at those who bartered the present for an imagined future. Middle-class behavior included investing in stocks, buying insurance, having real estate, worshipping work, loving science, and practicing austerity despite having wealth. Irreligious protestantism, in short. Healthy eating, temperance, decorum, and sensible behavior are all bourgeois to a proletariat that revels in the moment, unfettered by concerns about interest rates and the “slow dime.”

To the middle class, both the lower and upper classes (titled aristocrats who have inherited their wealth) are despicable, due to their disdain for work and the Protestant ethic, and for the guiltless joy they derive in sensual pleasures such as drunkenness and fornication. Nations or communities which are poor or never had a bourgeois revolution are marked by orgies of revelry quite unknown in more economically prosperous places. These places are incomprehensible to the American sensibility, which views them as savage, brutal, and insane. The United States’ foreign policy is essentially to make people American through capitalism or kill them. They are better off dead than living any other way.

The American Revolution was, of course, along with the French Revolution and the English Civil War, a Protestant, masonic, capitalist revolution. It was, as much as the American-Israeli-propagated Middle East violence, a clash of socio-religious sensibilities. On one hand, the Calvinist capitalists who worshipped industry, and on the other, the clergy-allied landed gentry who saw work as man’s curse. When the masonic forces prevailed, it meant that a growth-oriented, work ideology would also prevail.

Though American capitalists were slave owners who derived much of their wealth from forced, unpaid labor, they revered the concept of work. They presented themselves as personally industrious, and from Jefferson’s and Washington’s achievements, we can see that some of them were. Their revolution laid the groundwork for a nation which, in many respects, is still a work camp.

Immigrants come to the United States, called the “land of opportunity,” typically for the promise of making money, and not for the enlightened social values or the quality of life. When one goes to Brooklyn, the housing blocks and the trains remind one that, in the industrial era, New York City was essentially a concentration camp of foreign textile workers who, like many of the less visible employees in the service industry, were barely paid.

They, too, were placated by the idea of chance. The chance wages of the tip jar are mystical, undefined, practically psychedelic; therefore they are more attractive than the cold hard reality of the paycheck. The tip jar is therefore a symbol of worker passivity. This modern condition of a giant, impoverished “middle class” of service industry workers conspicuously trading generous tips with one another in a prolonged orgy of self-congratulation and simulated affluence must end. As long as the dream world of nebulous “karma jar” income pollutes the atmosphere, no one can reconcile the insane injustice of an unpaid labor force reimbursed through the guilty feelings of their coworkers.

Can you imagine 1920s’ steelworkers in Pittsburgh, their faces stained with soot and grime, paying each other’s wages while their mill bosses pleaded poverty? That’s essentially what’s happening now in a merry-go-round circle-jerk of dream economics. When the first barista refuses the enforced gesture of happy-go-lucky largesse by their off-work co-worker, then the whole stinking system will collapse in a mound of idiocy and be revealed for the indentured servitude that it is.



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