Wednesday, April 5th, 2006

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

The “indie yuppie” phenomenon continues to not go away. This feature in New York Magazine is the latest salvo in the media’s attempt to understand some of today’s thirtysomethings, and it manages to coin an impressively gross new term in the process – “Grups”, taken from an old Star Trek episode. Yeah, THAT’S the road to cool. Cribbing terms from Star Trek. My thoughts on the topic haven’t changed too much since the last time the topic reared its unkempt yet fashionably-coiffed head – I don’t understand it. Are there really people as vacuous and fashion-victim-y as the article makes them out to be? Does anyone really think that consciously and objectively about what their lifestyle is or what they want it to be? I always thought that life was one of those things that just sort of happened… But either way, dig the unquestionably stylish photo of Ivy’s Andy Chase and Dominique Durand (and their spawn). If they’re the prototypical grup-couple, does that make Adam Schlesinger the wacky neighbour?

CBS offers some commentary on the piece and The Albequerque Tribune has already embraced the term with their own “I’m a grup and I love it!” column and The Globe & Mail has also bought in while The Orgeonian still clings to the apparently now-passes “indie yuppie” label. My rule of thumb – anyone who actually uses a (stupid) media-created term to reference themselves needs to be taken out back and stabbed to death with a 1″ Strokes pin.

I Like Music has an interview with Chris Walla and The Gateway with Nick Harmer of grups-fave Death Cab For Cutie The Anchorage Daily News talks to grups-faves-in-waiting Matt Pond PA.

The AV Club gets a look at Janet Weiss of Quasi and Sleater-Kinney’s iPod. Quasi’s new one, When The Going Gets Dark, came out March 21.

Manchester Online talks to Patterson Hood about Drive-By Truckers’ new album A Blessing And A Curse, out April 18.

Elf Power are at the Horseshoe on May 3.

The Varsity (Bugmenot) has run an interview I conducted with Matt Brown of Trespassers William. It was/is my first-ever interview and I was mildly surprised to find the hardest part wasn’t the interview itself, but meeting the word count.

Entertainment Weekly confirms, via interview with creator Mitchell Hurvitz, that Arrested Development is dead. But at least season 3 will be out on DVD June 13, and since it was a truncated season, it’ll be a cheap 2-disc set. Via The Big Ticket.

24: Why do they keep sending people to CTU medical? No one makes it out of there alive except the bad guys. And at least they’ve replaced Chloe with someone hotter. Which means, of course, that she’ll be crazy and/or a traitor. Okay, this clumsy “Jack has to rescue a little girl” detour has time-filler written all over it. Next, someone will tell Jack they absolutely need a pint of Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry’s, even with the curfew. Only Jack can do it. And the big bad reveal is… huh. I repeat: Huh. Good luck selling that one.

Note – there’s basically three new posts up in the past 24 hours. Do check them all out.

np – Crooked Fingers / Red Devil Dawn

By : Frank Yang at 9:35 am
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. Five17 says:

    Re; Chloe. More Chloe=Best Season since Season 2. AND Chloe doesn’t need to be chased by a cougar!

    Arrested Development also won’t be released in June. The link http://www.tvshowsondvd.com… says as much. Hopefully, the reason it’s postphoned is because they’re going to fully load the set with extras.

  2. Duce says:

    Stupid Robocop teaming up with Nixon to form dynamic villain supergroup….

  3. TS says:

    I didn’t see Nixon behind this – thought he was just a dumb weasel. And Palmer – oh noo – another Palmer can’t bite the dust!!!

  4. John says:

    Frank, is your streak of consecutive days posting still intact. Because of your time dating thing the other day? Just asking????

  5. Dave says:

    William Shatner is quite possibly my favorite actor. True story.

  6. graig says:

    Arrested Development is delayed from it’s June 13 release to an unspecific "later this year".

    http://www.tvshowsondvd.com

  7. Amy says:

    God how I wish this grup business was a belated April Fool’s joke. I suspect the evolution of the name from indie yuppie last year to grup and those other embarassing 2006 neologisms means the names aren’t quite sticking. That the mainstream media and the advertisers they pander to are having a tougher time than anticipated repackaging what used to be called Generation X.