Brooklyn artists live in marketing house, are marketing product

By Dan Brooks in New York 2 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddrQ5BPCcOk

Before you read this New York Times article about a communal house in Brooklyn that is also a new media company, you should know that the first person you encounter will be named Dickerman Cade Sadler III. Keep reading. It is important that you complete the article, in the same way it was important that the first Marines who entered Saddam Hussein’s palace search every room. Someday, history will need to understand this decadence. Welcome to the Clubhouse, a three-story house in Ditmas Park where “eight roommates, most of them musicians and artists, share meals and expenses, use a Google doc to keep track of their chores, and pitch in to shop for groceries and stock the bathrooms.” That probably sounds like a normal house to you, but it’s actually a brand/new media startup/final step in the substitution of lifestyle for art.

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Friday links! It blows, it sucks, it doesn’t exist edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment
Montana

Montana

There is no Combat! blog today, because I have been covered in a metaphorical avalanche of deadlines and a more literal avalanche of snow. For the second time since Tuesday, Missoula has been struck with a blizzard. Also for the second time since Tuesday, Charter Communications has effed up their DNS servers, so only a third of the internet works at my house. That third does not include Gmail or Weather.com, so I am cut off from the outside world in all ways that could mean anything to me. To sum up: winter is stupid, Charter is very stupid, and everything sucks. I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox, and they were okay, I guess.

The Daily Currant strikes again

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 6 Comments
A screen cap from The Daily Currant

A screen cap from The Daily Currant

The screenshot above is from an article in The Daily Currant, a satirical newspaper that has once again had one of its stories mistaken for fact, this time by a Maryland police chief who cited it in a presentation on the dangers of legalizing marijuana. Props to Jacek for the link. Annapolis police chief Michael Pristoop subsequently apologized for citing the story, adding, “This does not take away from the other facts presented in opposition to legalization or the good work of the Maryland Chiefs and Maryland Sheriffs Associations.” Actually, chief, it does. Your “good work” mistook a made-up thing for fact, and the other people in the room were, unlike you, immediately able to identify the thing as made-up. You should stop telling the people in that room what’s what. Pristoop can be forgiven for his mistake, however, as The Daily Currant continues to close the gap between “satire” and “false.”

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Missoula County Attorney enters endgame

By Dan Brooks in Montana Politics 1 Comment
Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg

Missoula County Attorney Fred Van Valkenburg

Fred Van Valkenburg is back from vacation today, and I do not envy him his voice mailbox. Probably he checked it while he was away. We know he read the paper, because he sent attorney Jim Ghidella an angry email after Ghidella wrote a letter to the editor critical of Van Valkenburg’s fight against the US Department of Justice. For those of you who have not followed this story: in 2012, the DOJ announced that it was investigating the University of Montana, Missoula police, and the county attorney’s office for improper handling of sexual assault cases. The police and UM cooperated, and their investigations are now over. Van Valkenburg, on the other hand, has insisted all along that Justice has no jurisdiction over his office, and recently got $50,000 from the county commission to pursue a declaratory judgment against them. That lawsuit was filed earlier this week—just in time for us to learn about the agreement that Montana’s state attorney general made with the DOJ in 2012 to cooperate with investigators.

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Fudge! Fudge me in the apples

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

My internet stopped working sometime during the night, presumably because Charter spent too much on mailing me digital phone offers every three days and ran out of money for electricity. Also during the night, Missoula got about six inches of snow on top of the eight we already had, so I am snowed in. Lacking both home Internet and the means to escape said home, I live as a nineteenth-century flaneur, painstakingly tapping out this record of my consciousness on my cell phone. Do you hear me, Charter? I already have a phone, and also your service guy is late. Maybe we’ll be back tomorrow with actual blog, or maybe we’ll die for lack of cat videos. We will certainly miss a valuable work day, to say nothing of our workout regimen. Pity me for the shut-in I am.