In San Diego, we have a discount store called GTM that buys Costco closeouts and scratch-and-dent items and resells them for less. It has a loyal base of bargain shoppers, and it feels a bit like a treasure hunt.
You can buy normal or even individual quantities, like a single roll of paper towels, with no membership required. I imagine other big cities have similar stores, probably in lower-income areas, that fill a similar role.
I agree with you on hip-hop. It's very important to me. And it's great that it's become so ubiquitous. But it wasn't always like that. Early hip-hop was just music created extemporaneously at a party or a park jam. It wasn't even recorded. It didn't fit the format of "about 4 minutes and some seconds." And the whole mixtape era was music of the moment, not even an official release, mostly a promotional product.
These forms of media were work-for-hire projects owned by the publisher, paid at a rate per word or page. Assignment turned in and paid for (or not) and on to the next assignment. A volume game.
Comic books, original paperback books (crime/detective stories, westerns, science fiction, etc.), hip-hop,... all intended as disposable entertainment—the commodified, created content of its day.
This was my first computer. I got it for Christmas when I was 9 or 10. Can't remember if it was 1983 or 1984. Mostly used it, and its particular flavor of BASIC, to create graphic images, pixel by pixel. I remember making a fantasy sword picture. What a memory!
Standard Ebooks is my go-to for beautiful, well-formatted Public Domain books. The 2025 page is a wonderful gift to start the year. I'm off to read Red Harvest and The Dain Curse. Happy New Year!!!
They charge $14.99 for the state filing. Usually a coupon code available. Or go to the state's website (CA at least), and file that for free, too. But for the convenience of not having to input my info again, I'll pay their fee.
Usually we think of history as what happened, but it's really more historiography, the story we tell about what happened. In college we would read 4 different academic sources about an event, and try to determine why they were so different. We'd start with the author's bio, see what university they teach out and try to determine their influences and models of interpretation.
This reminds me of a story I read about 10 years ago of a Japanese manufacturer of a very specific type and format of scientific lab notebook that ended production. I think about the story every now and then and go on a deep dive, but can never find it. Buried in the web.
There's a great documentary about Frank Frazetta called Painting with Fire. Later in life he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right hand. He taught himself to paint and draw again with his left.
When ever I want to learn something on my own, especially a comparative study, I include the search terms "syllabus' and 'reading list'. I figure there must be a class somewhere that has already covered this ground.
You can buy normal or even individual quantities, like a single roll of paper towels, with no membership required. I imagine other big cities have similar stores, probably in lower-income areas, that fill a similar role.