Cultish Creative Weekly (6/22/2024)

Passing “old stories” to “new generations” matters. The history of the world is made of it. The future our world depends on it. I’m fascinated how the old stories (Jesus/Gilgamesh/etc.) get recycled in modern culture. And I’m equally fascinated how the newer stories get their own treatments too.

The best places the find recycled and refreshed stories are in places like genre movies. Give me the characters, tropes, and boundary busters. Give me, an hour to talk to my favorite YouTube horror movie critic (CT Reese) and my favorite horror movie historian/multi-generational wealth attorney (Frazer Rice) about how story has evolved in a place most people can’t bring themselves to even look.

The political attack ads in PA, that I pretty much only see between innings of Phillies games, they’re getting… wild. I’ve been in and out of a swing state in an election year before, but full on living this in between every third out, are you people doing ok? The iterative process of marketing and advertising - where you see what works and then lean harder into it - is carried over to politics. Just like if you believe every claim in a toy commercial, this stuff will rot your brain if you let it. You can take or leave whatever you want from the candidates and their commercials, I’ll just be waiting out the innings and rooting for my home team in another sport of my choosing.

It’s important to be able to talk about politics and politicians without getting carried away OR carried out of the room. These are hard conversations to record, but I’m glad I’m doing them with Jack and Ben. Mostly because, as Ben puts it in this episode, “Your vote is and should be the smallest part of your political participation.” Elections, like baseball games, will come and go. What matters more than anything is your local (whatever that means to you) participation in real life.

Oh, and if all else fails, I’ll still remember an obscure Fugazi story by the end so everything in the world isn’t such a downer. Want to be inspired? Go be inspiring. Here’s our latest Breaking News episode:

Want all the portfolio talk without ANY politics? How about just some lite-statistics and rearview mirror metaphors? No, not the Hootie rearview, Jack Forehand and I are talking “How to Analyze Backtests”

From the Personal Archive this week:

Run-DMC gifted the intro the “Paul Revere” to the Beastie Boys and I am delighted.

Of course Miles Davis could outdo Pareto.

When Morgan Ranstrom told Bogumil Baranowski that his art and his music was the thing he’d poured the most of himself into, across his lifetime so far, and that if he wanted his kids to inherit anything, it was something he cared this much about sharing with them and the world, I may have welled up a little. Art as a legacy asset. Think about that (and listen to the interview, it’s full of Morgan sharing stuff like this).

Richard Pryor gave advice to Tiffany Haddish in a high school class and she still uses his advice on stages, pages, and movie screens to this day.

5-minute(ish) video reviews of things I love? Why not! Matt’s Cultish Review of “The Confidence Map” by Peter Atwater is live. More of these to come. Send me review ideas (this was really fun).