The Dollar Is The New Peso, etc.

I am working to get the rest of my LWC diaries up but while you wait, some miscellaneous items for your perusal:

• For the last month, I’ve been saying, “The dollar is the new peso”. But look, it was just the zeitgeist, bubbling up inside my brain: “Pay attention as you watch the catchy new music video from the mega-star rapster Jay-Z, ‘Blue Magic’, and see if you can’t spot the product placement. It is not a fancy car that he is endorsing – although both his rides, a Rolls- Royce and soft-top Bentley, are plenty spiffy – but rather a currency – and it is not the dollar. Like so many in the hip-hop genre, the song is a celebration of ostentatious wealth. But capturing the attention of commentators in this clip, shot in the glimmering, neon-lit canyons of New York City, are the repeated glimpses of flickering wads of €500 notes.” Via Dave Usborne in New York for The Independent Online.
• Andy Parker found this excellent piece about how homeless queer youth are using video to connect to each other, but terrifyingly, the video had been taken down.
• Meredith McGill and I continue to look for possible cures for our internet ‘interest’. Korea has a dramatic solution: Jump Up Internet Rescue School.
• And from my graphic novel collaborator, Teddy: Cirque Du Soleil Sex Crimes Investigations.