An artist named Joan As Police Woman is already posing as someone else, and now the cop who is really a musician is out with not one but TWO cover albums reinterpreting the works of Prince, The Strokes, Neil Young, and others. On Cover 2 (Cover came out in 2009), Joan as Police Woman dissects an Outkast song, mixing its disparate elements— whispers, breaths, horn riffs, synth singing, drum machine—to sound as if they’re all happening independently and lining up by accident. The outcome is bizarre, but we should expect such a cut-and-paste from Joan-as-policewoman-as-André-3000. Listen and let your brain disintegrate.
Everybody called it and our predictions have come true at lightning speed: the Quibi launch has tanked. Now, the premise of ten-minute bites of Hollywood-quality pocket television was a gamble to begin with— we already have YouTube, don’t we, and real TV is better screened on something larger than a human palm. But maybe the Hollywood execs who made Quibi had dreamed up the thing we never knew we needed. For all the buzz the company drummed up in its first month after launch, they’ve been able to convince only a very modest number of people to pay for their cellphone-only programming (or to even install the app for a 90-day free trial period, which, at this point in the product’s life, every user could still be under). Of course, no part of the failure is the company’s fault. “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” said CEO and movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg. “Everything.” Take that as you will, but if you’d wasted nearly $2 billion one month into the life of your company, you’d want a scapegoat, too.
Quibi may be too tiny, but it’s not like the big screen is doing so hot. To make up for their empty seats, independent movie theaters like the Alamo Drafthouse are launching their own streaming platforms so you can rent or buy access to the films they show. “Isn’t this just Netflix,” you could argue— or HBO, Prime, or a slew of other streaming platforms. But that would mark you as unsophisticated. “Alamo On Demand will include a library of entertainment for rental or purchase that is suitable for the discerning Drafthouse audience,” they’ll have you know; in addition to features like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, they’ll specialize in arthouse films that you’d never find with the commoners over at Netflix. There really is a streaming service for everyone.
One benefit of your home theater (ok, laptop) is the ability to BYO snacks with no guilt or retribution. And while the screens may be shrinking, over at Kellogg’s, the bites have enlarged. Because cereal is no longer breakfast, the company has launched a set of mondo-sized Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Frosted Flakes, designed to be grasped instead of floating in milk. Just make sure to relegate them to the rom coms— these aren’t high-brow enough to consume alongside such intellectual content as Alamo On Demand.
