By now everyone is familiar with the hype cycle. You know the drill: the ginned- up enthusiasm of publicists combines with word of mouth (and blog) to create so-called buzz. Articles appear, posing one of three questions. For the new artist: is this the next big thing? For the established artist (or restaurateur): will stratospheric expectations be met? For the figure whose stock is down: can a comeback be staged? Then the release date arrives, or the premiere, or opening; at last the thing itself can contend with its reception. But, wait, now backlash surges alongside the ongoing hype. And understandably, too: it's not nice being force-fed even the tastiest food. But hold on a second, here comes the backlash-to-the-backlash ... Read More

In New York, they saved.

They saved on orange juice, sliced bread, they saved on coffee. On movies, magazines, museum admission (on Friday nights). Train fare, subway fare, their apartment out in Queens. It was a principle, of sorts, and they stuck to it. Mark and Sasha lived on the 7 train that year and when they got out, out in Queens, Mark would follow Sasha like a little boy as she checked the prices at the Korean grocers, and cross-checked them, so they could save on fruits and vegetables and little Korean treats. They saved on clothes. Read More

 Paranoid Park

The film is washed away by the quirky music choices Van Sant made for the soundtrack. They turn Paranoid Park into a pleasant mix tape made by somebody with okay taste. It doesn't help that his mix tape is offered to teenagers. 

Van Sant's teenagers are mostly numb objects. They're no James Deans, they don't act out, and Van Sant has a Warholian view of them. The girls come off better than the boys, which is strange because the girls appear to be professional actors and the point seems to be how beautifully natural everything is, or naturally beautiful. Read More

Conducted Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Pt. 1: Intro

n+1: So this is a hedge fund.

HFM: This is a hedge fund. Now you’ve seen what a hedge fund looks like: a lot of flat screens, a lot of people staring intently into them, and not a lot of noise. We’re quite quiet for a hedge fund. We don’t have TVs—that’s one of the big differences probably between this trading floor and a typical trading floor is that I got rid of TVs some time ago. I don’t have a TV at home, and I thought it was ironic that I had gone through all this effort to resist having a TV at home and then I would spend all day watching Squawk Box on CNBC, so then we decided, we’ll just get rid of the volume, we’ll kill the volume, and then I spent my whole day inventing dialogue for Maria Bartiromo, and new texts for the—well, there was this foot fungus commercial that would play on CNBC all the time which was really disgusting, and we were coming up with new variations for the foot fungus. So we decided finally we really have to get rid of TVs. Other than that it’s pretty standard. Read More