Seven Red

Graffiti Sundays: Wise Words and Rooftops

topspun — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 22:11:23 +0000

“On and on and on How the alphabet boys carry on…” - The Gaslight Anthem, Orphans Just some flicks today of a recent rooftop by HERTS, OMENS, and, of course, NOTEEF. I should note that about half the local hits on this blog come from people looking up some combination of “NOTEEF” and “graffiti” and [...]

Omnibus Spending Banalities

topspun — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 04:35:22 +0000

1) When you fuck up the opening of a Cling Wrap box, you have to live with that fuck up for two months. When you fuck it up three consecutive times, it follows that you have six months of Cling Wrap hell on your hands. How does this happen? You know that last bit of [...]

Graffiti Fridays: Amusing Literacies

topspun — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:25:00 +0000

In our last episode, we saw a quick AMUSE tag on Lincoln. A few days later I saw this, a little further up Lincoln, by Ainsle: AMUSE, Truck throwee, Lincoln and Ainsle In this context, I don’t want to talk about styles or ups, but literacies. It strikes me that a non-writer would have a [...]

The Contripreneur

topspun — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 04:15:00 +0000

I’m coining it! I did a Google search for “contripreneur,” and got this: Bupkiss. So it’s mine. As you know, I intensely dislike the term “prosumer,” largely because I think it obscures more than it reveals. The actual term for the activity supposedly taken up by the prosumer should be, in my view, the “contripreneur,” [...]

Nostalgia for the Dialectic

topspun — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:45:31 +0000

Here’s one from American Slang, which will probably have to compete for my top ten records of the year. (Isn’t December the time for Top Tens?). The Gaslight Anthem is, to my mind, this really interesting phenomenon, since their overriding theme seems to be the overt nostalgia for some working class youth, but it meshes [...]

Graffiti Wednesdays: More Tags

topspun — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 04:42:00 +0000

Two good tags I managed to catch today with my trusty (if low-res) cell. First, a nice fat NEKST tag on the back of a truck in front of me on Lincoln. Here it is: There’s a guy in Philadelphia who writes NEKST; he and SKREW just do these incredible blockbusters and rollers all over [...]

Kids These Days #1: Tiny Bubbles

topspun — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 00:23:42 +0000

This will be the first in the series “Kids These Days!,” in which Seven Red rants and raves about the things the kids do these days, and general problems of raising kids, well, these days. The rhetorical form is simple, and can be summarized as follows: What the fuck is this shit, now? The primary [...]

Uninteresting Banalities

topspun — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:50:49 +0000

In addition to my many other Annoying Writing Quirks, I always find myself starting off these posts with “So,…,” as if we’ve been having a conversation. But the conversation’s been sparse of late, I’ll admit. It was the summer, and I’ve been – despite that – pretty busy, but also feeling pretty drained. This combination [...]

I Use to Doubt It, But Now I Believe It

topspun — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:46:37 +0000

So the book goes like this: if you’re into anything Indie music-wise, you must go out and buy the Arcade Fire’s new album The Suburbs. It’s like a requirement, the analogy being if you’re into contemporary fiction, you have to go out and buy Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (the review in the New York Times this [...]

Rhetorical Miscalculation of the Week

topspun — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 03:18:36 +0000

Judiciary Committee Republicans, a note. I’m sure it must be very sad to sit in the minority on such an important committee, with nominees coming at you left and right, and nothing to do but grumble and delay. I get it. I think we all sit on non-functional committees at some point, or occupy roles [...]