Feeling Jumpy
🦞🥞 Vol. 2, No. 8
Broadway (the one in Nashville) is having a moment1. In the last 3 months, the resume has been impressive: the birthplace of Hawk Tuah, fights between overpriced chicken fingers and card-carrying nazis, and last night, following Vanderbilt football’s massive upset of #1 Alabama, a stolen goal post march (on the way to a bath in the Cumberland River).
Hours later, nice guy standup comedy juggernaut and Nashville local Nate Bargatze hosted SNL for the second time in last years, where he celebrated the Vandy win on stage after delivering an equally solid performance, including the return of George Washington:
The Perfect A.I. Girlfriend: Meet the Guys With A.I. Companions
My theory is that the map we currently have in our heads no longer matches the territory we are in. We’re waiting for someone to draw a new map, and until then, we’re just going to witter away to each other on podcasts.
Adam Curtis
Biden administration funds project to connect Texas grid to southeastern power markets
We started building a national power grid almost exactly 100 years ago. It’s nice that we’re finally starting to connect the second most populous state.
Pictured: Danny White and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader Cynde Lewis in The Photo the Dallas Cowboys Never Wanted the Public to See
Everybody wants to be Beyoncé, nobody wants to be Beyoncé
Interesting parallels between Beyoncé and LeBron: once-in-a-lifetime, record breaking talents with undeniable marketability on a global scale, but with such larger-than-life, almost superhuman personas and presences that they struggle to stay reasonably aspirational as brand ambassadors.
The How & Whyyy of Unhinged Marketing
Uncertainty breeds both irony and self-awareness, which have fueled meme culture and unhinged tactics, especially in the area of self-deprecating humor, which has traditionally been anathema to corporate brands seeking to project confidence and trustworthiness.
Energy drinks are everywhere. How dangerous are they?
It’s not like Red Bull and Monster weren’t already everywhere pre-pandemic, but brands like Celsius, PRIME, Alani Nu, and a long line of others in the “healthier for you” (read: typically sweetened with sucralose vs sugar) category. These stats are wild:
Sales have boomed in recent years, growing by 73 percent from 2018 to 2023. Nearly half of consumers drink them multiple times a week. In the next five years, energy drink sales are on track to reach $30 billion in the US.
As for the dangerous bit? The answer is a very unsatisfying “it depends” but the fact that many of these drinks are marketed as supplements does leave them room to be less transparent about what you’re putting in your body:
Although a product label may list caffeine and guarana extract, says Jose, “You have no idea how much caffeine you’re getting from either one of those ingredients.” An FDA loophole means there aren’t legal limits on the amount of caffeine in any of these products, nor does the agency require manufacturers to tell you how much caffeine is in them.
Riley Walz put a “crappy Android phone” high up on a pole in San Francisco, attached a mic, and set it to use Shazam 24/7, then upload whatever it hears to this playlist.
He calls the whole thing Bop Spotter and I love this description:
This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals. It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what’s popping off in real-time.
The Secret Code of Pickup Basketball
In 2015, Nick Rogers, now a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, conducted an ethnography of a pickup-basketball game…Rogers wanted to understand the paradox of pickup basketball. Its culture is aggressively masculine. Its players tend to be diverse in age, race, and class. They jostle one another, elbow to elbow. They collide with full force. They get loud. And yet, fights are relatively rare.
Rogers believes that this carefully pitched intensity is enabled by a special set of norms. These aren’t etched into stone like the Ten Commandments, he told me, but the players he interviewed on the sidelines were all fluent in them, and even reverent toward them. This unspoken code keeps the game from tipping over into violence. It allows a small group of perfect strangers with little in common besides basketball to experience a flow state—a brief, but intense, form of group transcendence.
It’s a good read, though you could also save yourself some time and watch Sheng Weng’s Netflix special Sweet & Juicy and get a related, but much funnier take on runs at the public courts:
The data visualization wizards at The Pudding used satellite imagery to build a database of 59,707 outdoor courts in the U.S.
Kristofferson has made it known that he wants the opening lines of Leonard Cohen's "Bird On The Wire" ― "Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free" ― engraved on his tombstone, but until then he plans on maintaining a full schedule. "I can make an occasional film and go out on the road any time I want," he says. "I feel very fortunate with how my life has turned out." ⭐️
Recommendations
THE HONEST BROKER
If you work in a creative field, you should be reading Ted Gioia for great macro-level insights about what is happening across culture and how it’s impacting the business of culture and creativity.
Yes, I am aware that The Great White Way is also having a moment with so many A-listers doing limited run shows this fall. You guys won’t shut up about it.
Mmmm...pizza.