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Fin de siècle: a mini mixtape

By Matthew Rutledge on 12.27.2009

Here is an ad hoc, interim mixtape that follows very little rhyme or reason — it’s just a collec­tion of what I’ve been listen­ing to lately. Goodbye 2009, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

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December chill

By Matthew Rutledge on 12.18.2009

This is about the longest I have gone without updat­ing my blog in some time — it’s mostly due to malaise over a number of things concur­rently happen­ing in my life.

I’ve been having a wee bit of writer’s block lately, which never used to stop me before (I would just resort to more Youtube video posts and such), but lately I’ve been think­ing that I need to have more of a purpose in my commu­nic­a­tion, instead of blow­ing mean­ing­less efflu­via across the internet’s hot coals.

I’ve also been kind of busy — I have had a temp job for a few weeks now (which I don’t enjoy what­so­ever, and which is an insult to my skill set — I’ll just leave it at that), and I have also been under­go­ing a clin­ical trial to make some extra cash. But I am keep­ing my eye on the prize — a future of finan­cial solvency, for one, and getting this awful year behind me, two. 2009 will go down as one of the worst on record — it would be the worse, if not for the fact that I said 2008 was the worst, and I don’t like to contra­dict myself.

That being said, I am actu­ally look­ing forward to 2010, because all this pent-up energy I have — to travel, to live health­fully, to live else­where, to refo­cus and reac­quaint myself with normalcy, it might just become a groundswell that will finally take me out of this malaise I’ve had for the past few years.

As for the end of December, I’m trying my hard­est to be sacchar­ine and senti­mental about the holi­days, and search­ing for things for which to be thankful.

Oh, I did find one thing — this Christmas commer­cial from 1980 that combines kittens with synthes­izers in a cloy­ing mix of near-tears nostal­gia. Watch!

Happy holi­days, everyone.

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I’ve got lines across the world

By Matthew Rutledge on 12.08.2009

principal-lines

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Direct connection

By Matthew Rutledge on 12.06.2009

While the previ­ous video was more of an internal self-promotion video for WFAA in Dallas, this video was a major ad campaign used during junc­tions and station breaks for Philadelphia’s KYW-TV. It is simply stun­ning — these promos have a futur­istic, whim­sical, avant-garde tenor paired with a bit of psyche­delia. It might be the closest TV ever came to produ­cing some­thing obvi­ously influ­enced by cocaine.

Click to play:

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Trudy Haynes is my favor­ite. “I’m your direct connec­tion… to the grapev­ine.” But I love it all — the weird sunny/rainy/lightning bolts over Philadelphia City Hall, the dramatic elec­tron­ics from the stock ticker and metero­lo­gical equip­ment, the “Whoo!‘s” from the electro-disco sound track, it’s all fantastic.

PS: I have writ­ten a blog post about this before, but the clip keeps on disap­pear­ing from Youtube. This time, I snagged a copy of my own so that it won’t happen again. (All copy­rights respect­ive of their owners, this is for educa­tional purposes only.)

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Back when leotards told the story

By Matthew Rutledge on 11.30.2009

Thanks to my inim­it­able friend Joseph, who has a penchant for find­ing all the weird­est crap that youtube has to offer, I have now watched this 1980 WFAA-TV (Dallas/Fort Worth) promo video elev­enty times.

It is nuts how in 1980, musta­chioed men in leotards were simply “court jesters” that told the story of TV ratings success, and not big flam­ing homo­sexu­als doing pirouettes.

This is really worth a watch — for a number of reas­ons. It offers a glimpse into a world of broad­cast tele­vi­sion that used to spend lots of money to develop strong brand images, and it also offers a glimpse into the world of leotard-wearing fancy men circa 1980 in The Metroplex.

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Disco Future / Disco Past

By Matthew Rutledge on 11.24.2009

I’ve been on a big Donna Summer kick lately, paying harder atten­tion to over­looked gems stuck in the middle of her ‘clas­sic’ albums. There was a time in musical history where the vanguard was the main­stream, where the biggest star was also part of the biggest paradigm shift in popu­lar music, and the story was writ­ten by Summer and Moroder.

It of course began with “I Feel Love”, but there are a number of magni­fi­cent tracks from the same era that are formed with the basic recipe from that song. The recipe, of course, is a hypnotic, robotic, yet warm and organic compu­ter­ized dance beat. Surely Moroder felt it was incom­plete, as it was very much not digital. It is a freak of nature, some­thing both arti­fi­cial yet very unique, not exactly the same twice.

Two of her songs have taken on a special mean­ing for me lately, because of their subject matter:

“Working the Midnight Shift” is one of those electro-disco master­pieces that holds its own against the 30 years of music that came after. I’ve been work­ing a late night temp job lately, so it has been the abso­lute jam that keeps me sane through these tougher times. It seems to be the first of what was several of her songs that feature the perspect­ive of work­ing women in ardu­ous or thank­less situations.

“I’m work­ing the midnight shift for that extra little some­thing, the things that are out of reach, I need so bad…”

God damn! Her voice, her inflec­tion, the robotic drum machine, the way the song just effort­lessly glides from start to finish. It is one of several Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder/Pete Bellotte masterpieces.

“Can’t Get to Sleep At Night” has also been on heavy rota­tion, because I suffer from pretty bad insom­nia. It’s not as “compu­ter­ized” as “Working the Midnight Shift”, simply because the produc­tion value had gotten much more slick as far as the synthes­izers go, but it’s still fantastic.

And, of course, there is “Our Love”, a song that almost eclipses “I Feel Love” or any other song Donna sang that had the word love in it. To me, it is “I Feel Love II” — it is no less a predictor of future genres than its ante­cedent. Not only is that proven true by New Order’s “Blue Monday”, a song that notori­ously took its sequen­cing pattern from “Our Love”, but the second half of the song simply predicts the future in a way few pop songs ever have.

I still lose a bit of my breath once “Our Love” hits 4:20 — it is an abso­lute revel­a­tion of music. It never ceases to floor me; Donna Summer never ceases to floor me. Music like that won’t be made again.

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Mexigoogle 2: Monterrey

By Matthew Rutledge on 11.22.2009

Monterrey is not that far from the Texas border, only a few hours from Laredo, which is about 3.5 hours from Austin. As such, it is the city I am most likely to visit in Mexico any time soon. If I start doing really well with my money, I might sneak a visit in the up and coming months (it would have to be before April, because by then it starts to get extremely warm down there.)

I discovered this amaz­ingly detailed guide to driv­ing to Monterrey via the south­ern border cross­ing at Laredo. It has inspired me to take this trip, if I can afford it.

Here’s why, though — Monterrey is a true Latin American city within a day’s drive, much safer than the aver­age Mexican metro­polis. It also abuts the Sierra Madre Oriental, which is not the highest moun­tain range in Mexico, but is the most prom­in­ent range (consider that Monterrey is at about 1,500 feet above sea level, and Cerro El Potosi, 50 miles south of Monterrey, is 13,000 feet above sea level — that is a level of topo­graph­ical prom­in­ence almost unseen in the United States. It is a few thou­sand feet more prom­in­ent than Denver is to the Rockies.)

As a result, moun­tains tower over Monterrey, and Google Maps shows that off.

Here are some of the more afflu­ent parts of the region:


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Right up against the moun­tains in Southeast Monterrey:


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Downtown, complete with a Sears:


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I forget the bridge’s name, but it has to be a Calatrava:


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Here’s a Mexican 7–11 in San Pedro Garza Garcia, a suburb of Monterrey:


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Some weird store called “Waldo’s Mart”, in Northwest Monterrey:


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Looks like LA!


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Mexigoogle Part 1: Guadalajara

By Matthew Rutledge on 11.20.2009

It appears that Google Maps street view has moved to the first ‘devel­op­ing’ coun­try, Mexico. All the other coun­tries here­to­fore were in the EU, Canada, the US, Australia, NZ, i.e. all places with HDI’s well above .900. Unless you looked hard discovered the most blighted of urban England or the American Northeast, you weren’t likely to discover some­thing ‘totally differ­ent’ from middle class reality.

But Mexico is a differ­ent story, having an income strat­i­fic­a­tion that makes New York City seem like Denmark. So the side streets of its major cities have the poten­tial to expose us to a very differ­ent, but very inter­est­ing, urban landscape.

So far, it appears Google has added Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puerto Vallarta, D.F. (Mexico City and suburbs), and Puebla. Those cities alone accounts for much of Mexico’s upper and middle classes, so it makes sense.

Let’s go on a quick journey.

The first thing about Guadalajara I noticed was the shock­ing amount of graf­fiti. It reminded me of New York in the 1980’s. The trees are more shrubby and subtrop­ical than I thought (jacaranda trees and palms); the terrain quite flat. It reminds me of what I saw in Colombia — a lot of 19th century build­ings mixed with early modern mid-rises. It seems that the 1950’s-1970’s were good times for Latin America based on the preval­ence of mid century skyscrapers.

If you pan around this map, you will see a traffic circle with a gigantic ugly super­mar­ket taking up most of the real estate. But I love those direc­tional signs!


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This is the upper class and relat­ively new commer­cial district, Puerta de Hierro. Pan around all the way and you’ll see a shop­ping mall with a Chili’s!


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The inter­sec­tion of “Montréal” and “Bogota”, not too far from Puerto de Hierro:


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An older part of town with a fair amount of graffiti:


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A few polit­ical murals in a more run down part of town. PAN is one of the major polit­ical parties of Mexico. This resembles some of the polit­ical “bill­boards” I saw for local candid­ates in Barranquilla, Colombia — the same paint­ing schemes, painted on simil­arly short walls.


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More to come!

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Palm trees at 49 Degrees North

By Matthew Rutledge on 11.15.2009

Palm trees, at least a few species of them, are hardy down to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.


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That isn’t Hawaii or California, it’s Vancouver, BC, just in front of English Bay.

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TV License Men Beware!

By Matthew Rutledge on 11.14.2009

Note: I am going to start a sub-series of my blog in which I attempt to capture interesting/noteworthy ephem­era on Google Maps Street Views.

Here’s the first one, in South Belfast, Northern Island, some graf­fiti on the side of a terrace house that says “TV License Men Beware!”


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