[SIC] 121: Cucumber Time

December 31st, 2020

Dec 31, 2020

Hi all,

It’s finally over. Such a relief to put 2020 behind us. Onward and upward from here.

Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas, suggestion and critiques for [SIC] this year - they’re hugely appreciated. This week: Ben, Tim, I see you, thanks. S/o Michael too.

My guest this week on [SIC] Talks is Walter Schreifels, a friend and a literal legend of my music life from his (often overlapping) roles in Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Quicksand, Rival Schools, Walking Concert and many others. Walter’s such a personable, funny dude, who like most working musicians has had his life turned inside out this year, but manages somehow to be circumspect about it. It’ll be a good one. (Big up to his wife Heidi and @friendsfromnewyork, too). It’s happening on my IG Live @dietznutz at 4p ET / 1p PT today, and then in my grid thereafter. Come hang.

And happy new year, everyone.

Love,

Ben

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2020 Moodscape:

Four Teachers Decide to Just Be Drunk All the Time (Hyperallergic)
Employees don’t care about your cool culture anymore (Digiday)
Trumperdammerung vs Trump Balenciaga Complex (New Yorker / 032c)
Via Stereogum: Boston Dynamics’ Dancing Robots is a mood of some kind (Instagram)
The Leon Dore moodboard gets me in my feels. (Aimé Leon Dore)
Corollary but way different, QUARANTÄNE! Is a downloadable PDF Zine & LoveSexDreams Lockdown Lookbook (032C)
i-D on 2020, the year of the mullet.
Via Howard Lindzon: Ben Thompson who has a great look at the year 2020 in review (Stratechery)

Speaking of Lists and Predictions:

Axios’s 5 trends that will shape 2021 video.
Some really interesting predictions (and some incredibly obvious ones) from Beats & Bytes on 2021 for the music biz.
Kind of a list, so I put it in this section, via 1440: The most famous mythical creature from every country (Mental Floss)

New Paradigms

From TikTok to Depop: Fashion’s new trend funnel. (Vogue Business)
Related, via Future Party: TikTok creators Greg Auerbach and Nate Twer did $100,000 in sales for their Slapmask within 48 hours of posting a promotional video about it that directed fans to a Shopify link. (Business Insider)
And NFL players can get paid in Bitcoin now (Fortune)
While via Future Party: Microsoft is paying employee bonuses tied to whether they demonstrate integrity. (Business Insider)
A new paradigm of physical retail, created and accelerated by the pandemic’s disruptive forces, is ready to emerge. (eMarketer)
What happens now that the mall owns the retailer? (Retail Dive)

The Chinese Century:

Via Jing Daily - Luxury must ditch ‘aspirational’ as a value (The Popular Times)
Elsewhere, CCI chats here with Matthew Brennan, author of “Attention Factory,” about Douyin’s rise, the challenges of staying mainstream, and what the future holds for ByteDance.
Chinese millennials are slacking off at work as a subtle form of protest. Tactics include getting up every 50 minutes to get a glass of water. (Quartz)
Via CCI: marriages in China fell to a 13-year low in 2019, so single people are becoming a major driver of consumption with increasing discretionary spending power. (South China Morning Press)

Brands Will be Brands:

Hence Gucci’s Doraemon collection (Instagram)
Elsewhere, The North Face and Gucci teased on Twitter that Pokemon Go is about to get in on their 70s-inspired outdoor clothing collab. (Input)
While, from Ben Pruess: Loewe gets animated with a Totoro-centric Studio Ghibli collab (Hypebeast)
And Loewe CEO Pascale Lepoivre talked to Content Commerce Isider.
Via Future Party: Adidas is making shoes out of mushrooms (Business Insider)
While longtime buddy Moose Huerta’s Land See team launched SB Career Development, a program built to help professional skateboarders contextualize, validate and develop their caree

Stuff to Listen to, or about Stuff to Listen to:

From Tim Nolan: "[Heroku App’s “Drive and Listen”] Video and audio from a front seat POV from around the world."
Content development gods Nick Weidenfeld's and Amantha Walden’s typically wide-ranging top 20 of 2020 playlist. (Spotify)
NYE virtual vibes recommendation: our buddy John McSwain’s Sade Night NYE (Instagram)
Trapital’s take on why Square would want to acquire Tidal is a good one. Long story short: key gear in the flywheel.
Related: Meek Mill, Lil Durk, Lil Baby and 21 Savage Are Building Their Own Music Platform (Hypebeast)
And Peloton is now producing its own exclusive music, starting with 3 Elvis remixes from Dillon Francis, our homies Chromeo, and surprisingly, Big Boi. (Digital Music News)
Why Podcast Fans Will Always Reject a ‘Netflix for Podcasts’ (Medium)
S/o Michael Williams for this nugget, via Acontinuouslean: The new issue of The New Yorker is a single 30,000 word story called The Plague Year by Lawrence Wright. It’s one of the few single story issues in the 95 year history of the magazine. Listening to it takes 2 hours and 52 minutes at 1.25x.
Via Music Redef: Jason Hirschhorn’s Twitter thread of music biz documentaries

Art and Artists

NYT on Jeff Koons on Painting on Masterclass.
In Miami, an Incubator Trains Artists to Be Business-Savvy (Hyperallergic)
Fave painter Chrissy Anglicker for Blick Art. (Instagram)
Nothing But Flowers The New Yorker’s best art of 2020
Exhibitions to see in 2021 - Great art and artists on show in the world’s best museums and galleries (FT)
MUST WHAT WENT UP, COME DOWN? An interview with James Wines, a favorite architecture disruptor and retail anarchist. (032C)

Secret Life of Foods:

The Secret to Saving Asian Elephants? Oranges. (Atmos.Earth)
Why Japanese meals always come with pickles (Medium)

Stuff to Spend Christmas Money on?

Via Future of Transportation: The most valuable Hot Wheels collection in the world (CNN)
Or, the remnants of Uber's Jump bike fleet are now sold via Scootdepot for $700 without branding. Minimum order of four. (Scoop Depot)

Cuse I’ll never forget you

Shout out my hometown, lifelong team, EVS: 25 movies filmed in Syracuse (Syracuse.com)

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