#antoninotati — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #antoninotati, aggregated by home.social.
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I cried watching Brad Pitt’s new movie ‘Heart of the Beast’; I haven’t cried at the movies in decades
I don’t usually get into outdoors-y action-adventure films. Raiders of the Lost Ark was lost on me; I’d have preferred it if Kevin Costner actually taught the tango to canines in Dances with Wolves; and I’d sooner watch paint dry than view another Jurassic Park movie. But invite me into the studio and to a grand indoor setting, and I’m there: be it a blockbuster like Night at the Museum or anything mis-en-scene heavy by the likes of Wes Anderson or those late greats Hitchcock, Bergman even Polanski.
I also avoid sad films because, like, they’re sad.
So it surprised me that I totally enjoyed Brad Pitt’s new movie Heart of the Beast, complete with real tears streaming down my cheeks. Upon first hearing the film’s title, I thought Brad was in a new A-grade horror flick, and then realised the heart belonged to a beautiful ex-army service dog who accompanies Brad’s character on a challenging outdoors-y odyssey – the pair of them up against the elements, minute by minute.
Brad pretty much carries the entire film by himself – as ex-Army Special Forces veteran, James Belmont, who has post-war PTSD and who gets stranded in the freezing Alaskan wilderness with his combat dog after their small plane has crashed. It so happens that his dog, Odin, also suffers from PTSD – to the point of wailing in his sleep due to embedded memories of bombs, gunfire and horrific scenes of death.
Seeing the pair combating various obstacles and challenges in the jungles and hills is like watching the wounded leading the wounded, and you’re constantly wondering who will be leaving who behind by the film’s end.
Name a natural disaster and you can bet it’s something this pair comes across in an adventure they never asked for. Wild rivers to cross, freezing snow, rain with nothing but a tiny tent for shelter, attacks by rabid wolves and raging bears, tumbles down hills, falls from cliffs, deep gorges between lands that must be crossed, gusty winds, volatile rivers – you name it, this man and his best friend are put to the test.
By the film’s end, I found myself sighing with relief but also patting my eyes with tissues since some parts are very, very sad. And then there are bouts of joy. In fact, it’s the many emotions evoked through watching Heart of the Beast that will make this film a winner with just about anybody who goes to see it. Just be sure to bring a big box of Kleenex with you, plenty of water, and anything else you might need to survive the sad parts.
‘Heart of the Beast’ is in cinemas September 24, 2026.
Round of golf in the backyard anyone? BucketGolf is golf without the golf course
How to Turn an Australian Travel Dream Into a Long-Term Hospitality Career
5 Good Reasons to pay respect to the OG Krispy Kreme Doughnut
In the company of muses and gods: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
Why the 90s Movie ‘The Craft’ Still Resonates with Millennial Women
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Say hello to Sanpellegrino Ciao! And enjoy a sprightly taste of Sicily
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#ANTONINOTATI #bradPitt #bradPittSCharacterInHeartOfTheBeast #cinema2026 #CREAMMAGAZINE #dogNamedOdin #dogSNameInHeartOfTheBeast #FILM #filmReviews #heartOfTheBeast #movieReviews -
Make room on the coffee table for a new tome on Madonna’s full and massive discography
Unless you’ve been hiding under a (very large and heavy) rock recently, you’d have come across a heck of a lot of Madonna posts online these past few weeks. The artist’s latest album Confessions II has been promoted left, right and centre and see her gracing the top of the charts just about everywhere around the globe.
But what about the backstory of each track – and the stories behind all of the artist’s other hits? If you care to dive deep, you’ll be happy to know a book is soon to be released titled Madonna: All The Songs – The Story Behind Every Track, by French author and muso, Benoît Clerc.
The massive tome is due to be released in October 2026 and looks like it could be one of the most substantial Madonna reference books yet published.
Published by Octopus Publishing Group, the 624-page hardback takes the same approach Clerc has used in his previous All The Songs books on artists including David Bowie, Queen, Prince, and ABBA. Each of these has concentrated on the music and lyrics of the artists’ ouvres – as opposed to serving as conventional biographies – and so too will the book about Madonna’s output.
All the obvious (landmark) songs will be in there – such as “Like a Virgin”, “Material Girl”, “Vogue”, “Ray of Light”, “Music”, and “Hung Up”, while Clerc will also go into considerable depth with songs that weren’t singles, too. Album tracks, B-sides and rarities that perhaps even the most ardent fans haven’t read much about. Plus there are some beautiful portraits of the artist that not even this writer and avid fan has seen.
The book will examine the inspiration behind individual songs; the writing and recording processes; the musicians and producers involved; and of course Madonna’s input to each track. The intention is to put each song into its wider creative and historical context rather than simply recounting Madonna’s life. For example, the reader will be able to jump from a huge cultural moment such as Like a Prayer or Vogue to lesser-known fan favourites like, say, “Supernatural” and “Ain’t No Big Deal” from eariler recording sessions, or “Cyber-Raga” and “Time Stood Still” from latter albums.
The ‘All The Songs’ series has a reputation for being extremely detailed, so you can expect this one to be sitting on coffee table, ready for regular referencing, for months and months to come.
‘Madonna: All The Songs – The Story Behind Every Track’ will run to 624 pages and will be published in lavishly designed, large-format hardback. Look for it with the Material Girl still on the cover, RRP $115.00, with an ebook also being made available, RRP $69.00, through Hachette from October 13, 2026.
It’s in your eyes… Andy Warhol’s favouritism for Debbie Harry
In the company of muses and gods: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
An interview with Belinda Carlisle: new shows added to her 2027 tour of Oz
It’s just like riding a bike! All things cycling as we already prep for the Tour de France 2027
Why the 90s Movie ‘The Craft’ Still Resonates with Millennial Women
Say hello to Sanpellegrino Ciao! And enjoy a sprightly taste of Sicily
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#ANTONINOTATI #AntoninoTatiInterviewMadonna #autobiographies #BenoîtClerc #biographies #biography #conversationsWithCultureIcons #madonna #MadonnaAllTheSongsTheStoryBehindEveryTrack #MUSIC -
The Kayangan Sanur: an oasis by the ocean… if you can imagine such a blissful thing
Sanur is a region in Bali that sounds as though it’s further away than it really is. Where most locals were telling me not to forget to pack a couple of large bottles of water for the trip, the actual proximity of the place from Seminyak made the recommendation almost laughable. The fact of the matter is that Sanur is just 15 kilometres from Seminyak – a 35 minute drive with average traffic, and with plenty of mini mart stops available on the way.
After that relatively brief trip, checking into the Kayangan Sanur hotel is a breeze. Bursts of marigold and comfy wicca chairs in orange and white greet you in the foyer, with your room key handed over within a couple of minutes. And the staff are lovely – not too imposing or patronising, just keen to get the job done. Also, no time-wasting ‘tour’ of the room, letting you get on with your holiday. We can see the air-con remote and the safety deposit box, so thank you.
My partner and I stayed in a room on the ‘Nirwana’ floor (translation: Nirvana) which is close to reception, so security was never a concern, and the walls are relatively soundproof so outside noise was never an issue. As for room to breath, the suite is more of a mini villa with plenty of space. Spacious living area, spacious bedroom, spacious bathroom, complete with spacious shower recess. So, yes, plenty of room to sit back / lay back / relax / scroll / game.
The bathroom is stocked with quality amenities including Savonnier body wash, shampoo and conditioner, and there’s plenty of room around the basin to store your own beauty and hygiene products brought from home.
There are two relatively large size TV sets, which is great news when one of you just wants to catch up on the news, and the other is hooked on his gaming. Ben brought his PS5 machine along, as he usually does on our trips abroad and would have been content if gaming was all he got to do while away from the big city.
There’s also, two air-cons – one in the living area, and one in the bedroom; plus a full kitchenette with gas stove-top (simply request to have your gas plugged in and switched on), electric kettle, sachets of coffee and artisan tea. In fact, your room is equipped with just about everything you need, and nothing wasteful – like, say, the W Hotel might pack their rooms with.
Traditional Indonesian design is also a unique selling point of the Kayangan. Dense, dark wooden doors, hard wicca on tough wood panelling for the bed head, and handsome, handcrafted art pieces hanging on the walls.
Breakfast is beaut, especially the very satisfying big breakfast (served American or English style). The produce is fresh, the fruit delicious, the juices thirst-quenching, and the coffee spot-on.
The only qualm I’d say I had about this place is the slow internet, particularly when you just want to scroll while relaxing in bed… but move about the roomy space with your mobile phone and eventually you’ll find a sweet spot for better speed.
Fast-track your own accommodation scrolling when you’re next organising a holiday to Bali, and key in Kayangan Sanur. You won’t be disappointed.
For rates and further information visit thekayangansanur.id.
Oshom Bali: a gem in the heart of Nuanu City, Indonesia’s new ultra-hip, super-sustainable hub
Strawberry fields forever… Enjoy a deliciously crafted beer while helping W.A. strawberry farmers
It’s just like riding a bike! All things cycling as we already prep for the Tour de France 2027
Why the 90s Movie ‘The Craft’ Still Resonates with Millennial Women
Say hello to Sanpellegrino Ciao! And enjoy a sprightly taste of Sicily
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#accommodation #ANTONINOTATI #bali #benRoccamante #holidays #indonesia #KayanganSanur #LIFESTYLE #portfolioIndonesia #travel -
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
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Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
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Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
Survival of the Fittest: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
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Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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#andyWarhol #CREAMMAGAZINE #popArt #POPCULTURE #popCultureMagazines
0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
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In the company of muses and gods: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
Patti Smith is famous for fusing rock’n’roll with awesome poetry, most notably on her seminal LP
Horses. In this interview, Smith talks about surviving the heady days of the 1960s and ’70s, her peers including Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, liaisons with lover Robert Mapplethorpe, and “keeping it together” throughout the decades.Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Patti, you have a bit of a hoarse voice there. Is it a cold?
Yes, it’s been going around New York and it’s a bit nasty. It makes you have coughing fits. But I feel better now.
And what’s the Patti Smith remedy for a cold?
Just to take steam showers, drink a lot of hot water mixed with lemon and honey, and rest.
Thanks for the advice, Doctor. I’m glad you’re ready to talk. Now, I believe your CV prior to singer/songwriter also revealed a stint in music journalism?
Well, I wasn’t very prolific. I did review some records… some blues artists – The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix. I just did reviews of records that I liked, to help make a living. Really, I was a poet and a writer but I do love rock’n’roll, and writing about rock’n’roll in 1970 was rather new. Anyway, I wrote for Creem [the US-based title] and Rolling Stone.
A few years ago you released ‘Twelve’, an album of covers by artists who were your peers in the ’70s. Did it seem surreal to be, decades down the track, covering songs by artists with whom you’ve shared the stage? And some artists whom you reviewed?
Well, I wrote about Jimi [Hendrix again], and I wrote about Bob Dylan, and I wrote about the Stones, and the Doors. In a way it’s not surprising that the people I was covering were the people I ended up having long relationships with, in that I’d been listening to them for years and had been inspired and influenced by them.
“There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement.” – Patti Smith on covering ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’
Do you record in the studio as though you are performing live?
When we recorded Horses [Smith’s album that constantly makes it into “top 100 albums of all-time” lists] it wasn’t much different to playing live. I didn’t know anything about recording, we just performed in the studio the same way we would perform in a show – with only a little technology. And I still do the same.On ‘Twelve’, you even managed to cover Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, sounding decidedly girly.
Well… I am a girl [laughs], and I was raised on girl groups: the Ronettes, the Crystals, Martha & the Vandellas, and maybe some of that shone through. I think that’s a good thing, and I actually think the ‘girlishness’ is inherent in that song. They were brilliant pop lyrics; very simple, yet they reflect the state and woes of our planet. There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement. It’s as much about corporate greed and my own country’s imperialist acts. But it’s also got a really nice groove.
And on The Beatles’ ‘Within You Without You’, you seem to come across even more down-tempo than George Harrison did. There appears to be a military bent to your take.
I wanted people to hear the lyrics, and I suppose it sounds militant because of the lyrics – which are very stoic. Sure, they have a Hindu philosophy that ‘love can change the world’, but it’s a strong point of view. It does ask us to examine our consciousness – are our goals in life materialistic or spiritual?
Or indeed, both? In today’s global state of affairs, the first thing that came to my mind hearing you recite the lyric ‘Are you one of them?’ was that the war does go on within you and without you, but there is something that you can do about it now if you want to…
Well a lot of good songs are like that. Even Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. It’s a brilliant anti-war song and it’s almost like Mick Jagger asks us to examine our conscience: ‘War, children, it’s a shot away, and love is a kiss away’.
There is this myth about the musicians of your original era, that the new generation assume you were all taking drugs, being decadent, having orgies and so on. Can you clarify that conception?
Well the main aspect of my experimentation was in art. I wrote about things within art, but in terms of myself I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I did not believe that drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots. To me, you took a drug to expand your mind and learn something. Most people did so many drugs but weren’t learning anything. And a lot of people died from them, or they destroyed their brain or their teeth. Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.
It sounds as though it brought you together with some very creative people. You went out with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe for a few years, of course.
I met Robert when I was 20, and he was my boyfriend until we were about 24. Then Robert was evolving, and he found he was more homosexually bent. But we stayed close friends for the rest of his life. We spent hours and hours making art together, but drugs were not the source of our friendship. I had a good time, and I went through some different things in life, but I’ve never been self-destructive. While being self-destructive has its romantic aspects, I’ll tell you it’s also a pain in ass. I think one of the reasons I’m [70-plus] years old and still healthy is that I’ve always been grateful for my gifts – my voice is strong, I’m a mum, I like to work, I travel, I write poetry, I’m still making records.
“I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I didn’t believe drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots.”
It’s a pity so many artists of your time were cut in their prime because of that self-destruction.
I try to talk to young people, of any generation, and if I can tell them anything, it’s to romanticise people’s work but not their lifestyle. Because I met Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and they all died at 27-years-old. And it’s really a tragedy.
Ah, all the Js…
Yes, and I don’t romanticise them being dead at 27. I wish Jimi Hendrix was still alive so I could talk to him, and collaborate with him or just be inspired by him. I mean, in the end, Jimi didn’t want to die. He had a million ideas. But he fucked up, you know. He took a bunch of pills and he drank that night, and he took another pill and he bought tracks. He didn’t commit suicide but he made a mistake. You know, you look at somebody like Jim Morrison; he just drank bottles and bottles and bottles of alcohol and it just totally messed up his body at such a young age. It’s not cool, and it’s not pretty.
It might leave a legacy, but an unfinished one?
Yeah, but it only left any legacy because he did good work. If he were to have just been some good-looking guy that drank himself to death he wouldn’t be much remembered. He’s remembered because he wrote great songs, was a great performer, a poet. And if he would have lived longer, he would have written even greater things. I don’t want anyone to feel I’m judgemental, or like, ‘So she’s old now and she’s going to turn against everything’. It’s not like that. I thought about this stuff when I was 20 years old and it’s why I’m still here, alive and healthy.
“Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.”
I must say, kudos to you for continuing to record to this day. Some people think Patti Smith is ‘one of those heavy singers from the 70s’, but at the end of the day you’re quite a shining example of persistence and survival. And the quality of your new musical and published work are testament to that.
Well thank you. I have seen a lot of stuff, you know. I know all about loss and death. A lot of my people died. Like Robert, my husband, and my brother, my piano player, and my parents. And still – no matter what – I love life. Bad things are going to happen, but there’s always going to be something great to think about and to write about. Your imagination will bring you things. The planets, or the full moon, or a really great book, or somebody has a cool movie out. You fall in love, or meet a really neat person. There’s a million reasons to live.
The above interview appears in the anthology Conversations with Culture Icons by Antonino Tati, available in select outlets including AGWA Design Store (online and physical outlet), Urban Depot (physical outlet), Boundless Books (physical outlet) and select Australia Post outlets.
From the Vault: Boy George on bisexuality, butch versus tenderness, and the difficult side of drag
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Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
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https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
Survival of the Fittest: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
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0 boosts 0 favoriteshttps://creammagazine.com/?author=0
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Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
Rate this:
#andyWarhol #CREAMMAGAZINE #popArt #POPCULTURE #popCultureMagazines
0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
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In the company of muses and gods: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
Patti Smith is famous for fusing rock’n’roll with awesome poetry, most notably on her seminal LP
Horses. In this interview, Smith talks about surviving the heady days of the 1960s and ’70s, her peers including Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, liaisons with lover Robert Mapplethorpe, and “keeping it together” throughout the decades.Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Patti, you have a bit of a hoarse voice there. Is it a cold?
Yes, it’s been going around New York and it’s a bit nasty. It makes you have coughing fits. But I feel better now.
And what’s the Patti Smith remedy for a cold?
Just to take steam showers, drink a lot of hot water mixed with lemon and honey, and rest.
Thanks for the advice, Doctor. I’m glad you’re ready to talk. Now, I believe your CV prior to singer/songwriter also revealed a stint in music journalism?
Well, I wasn’t very prolific. I did review some records… some blues artists – The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix. I just did reviews of records that I liked, to help make a living. Really, I was a poet and a writer but I do love rock’n’roll, and writing about rock’n’roll in 1970 was rather new. Anyway, I wrote for Creem [the US-based title] and Rolling Stone.
A few years ago you released ‘Twelve’, an album of covers by artists who were your peers in the ’70s. Did it seem surreal to be, decades down the track, covering songs by artists with whom you’ve shared the stage? And some artists whom you reviewed?
Well, I wrote about Jimi [Hendrix again], and I wrote about Bob Dylan, and I wrote about the Stones, and the Doors. In a way it’s not surprising that the people I was covering were the people I ended up having long relationships with, in that I’d been listening to them for years and had been inspired and influenced by them.
“There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement.” – Patti Smith on covering ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’
Do you record in the studio as though you are performing live?
When we recorded Horses [Smith’s album that constantly makes it into “top 100 albums of all-time” lists] it wasn’t much different to playing live. I didn’t know anything about recording, we just performed in the studio the same way we would perform in a show – with only a little technology. And I still do the same.On ‘Twelve’, you even managed to cover Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, sounding decidedly girly.
Well… I am a girl [laughs], and I was raised on girl groups: the Ronettes, the Crystals, Martha & the Vandellas, and maybe some of that shone through. I think that’s a good thing, and I actually think the ‘girlishness’ is inherent in that song. They were brilliant pop lyrics; very simple, yet they reflect the state and woes of our planet. There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement. It’s as much about corporate greed and my own country’s imperialist acts. But it’s also got a really nice groove.
And on The Beatles’ ‘Within You Without You’, you seem to come across even more down-tempo than George Harrison did. There appears to be a military bent to your take.
I wanted people to hear the lyrics, and I suppose it sounds militant because of the lyrics – which are very stoic. Sure, they have a Hindu philosophy that ‘love can change the world’, but it’s a strong point of view. It does ask us to examine our consciousness – are our goals in life materialistic or spiritual?
Or indeed, both? In today’s global state of affairs, the first thing that came to my mind hearing you recite the lyric ‘Are you one of them?’ was that the war does go on within you and without you, but there is something that you can do about it now if you want to…
Well a lot of good songs are like that. Even Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. It’s a brilliant anti-war song and it’s almost like Mick Jagger asks us to examine our conscience: ‘War, children, it’s a shot away, and love is a kiss away’.
There is this myth about the musicians of your original era, that the new generation assume you were all taking drugs, being decadent, having orgies and so on. Can you clarify that conception?
Well the main aspect of my experimentation was in art. I wrote about things within art, but in terms of myself I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I did not believe that drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots. To me, you took a drug to expand your mind and learn something. Most people did so many drugs but weren’t learning anything. And a lot of people died from them, or they destroyed their brain or their teeth. Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.
It sounds as though it brought you together with some very creative people. You went out with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe for a few years, of course.
I met Robert when I was 20, and he was my boyfriend until we were about 24. Then Robert was evolving, and he found he was more homosexually bent. But we stayed close friends for the rest of his life. We spent hours and hours making art together, but drugs were not the source of our friendship. I had a good time, and I went through some different things in life, but I’ve never been self-destructive. While being self-destructive has its romantic aspects, I’ll tell you it’s also a pain in ass. I think one of the reasons I’m [70-plus] years old and still healthy is that I’ve always been grateful for my gifts – my voice is strong, I’m a mum, I like to work, I travel, I write poetry, I’m still making records.
“I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I didn’t believe drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots.”
It’s a pity so many artists of your time were cut in their prime because of that self-destruction.
I try to talk to young people, of any generation, and if I can tell them anything, it’s to romanticise people’s work but not their lifestyle. Because I met Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and they all died at 27-years-old. And it’s really a tragedy.
Ah, all the Js…
Yes, and I don’t romanticise them being dead at 27. I wish Jimi Hendrix was still alive so I could talk to him, and collaborate with him or just be inspired by him. I mean, in the end, Jimi didn’t want to die. He had a million ideas. But he fucked up, you know. He took a bunch of pills and he drank that night, and he took another pill and he bought tracks. He didn’t commit suicide but he made a mistake. You know, you look at somebody like Jim Morrison; he just drank bottles and bottles and bottles of alcohol and it just totally messed up his body at such a young age. It’s not cool, and it’s not pretty.
It might leave a legacy, but an unfinished one?
Yeah, but it only left any legacy because he did good work. If he were to have just been some good-looking guy that drank himself to death he wouldn’t be much remembered. He’s remembered because he wrote great songs, was a great performer, a poet. And if he would have lived longer, he would have written even greater things. I don’t want anyone to feel I’m judgemental, or like, ‘So she’s old now and she’s going to turn against everything’. It’s not like that. I thought about this stuff when I was 20 years old and it’s why I’m still here, alive and healthy.
“Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.”
I must say, kudos to you for continuing to record to this day. Some people think Patti Smith is ‘one of those heavy singers from the 70s’, but at the end of the day you’re quite a shining example of persistence and survival. And the quality of your new musical and published work are testament to that.
Well thank you. I have seen a lot of stuff, you know. I know all about loss and death. A lot of my people died. Like Robert, my husband, and my brother, my piano player, and my parents. And still – no matter what – I love life. Bad things are going to happen, but there’s always going to be something great to think about and to write about. Your imagination will bring you things. The planets, or the full moon, or a really great book, or somebody has a cool movie out. You fall in love, or meet a really neat person. There’s a million reasons to live.
The above interview appears in the anthology Conversations with Culture Icons by Antonino Tati, available in select outlets including AGWA Design Store (online and physical outlet), Urban Depot (physical outlet), Boundless Books (physical outlet) and select Australia Post outlets.
From the Vault: Boy George on bisexuality, butch versus tenderness, and the difficult side of drag
Rate this:
#anNie #annNie #classic #CREAMMAGAZINE #interview #JohannKim #JohannKimPigeonhole #ostinTorre #paratorePhotography #pattiSmith #pattiSmithAndHerBandTour #paulOConnor #philParatore #philipParatore #PhilipParatorePhotographers #phillipParatore #photographerPhilipParatore #pigeonholeAnNie #pigeonholeAnnNie #pigeonholeStore #POPCULTURE #rock #soniaAudino
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Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
Survival of the Fittest: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
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Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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#andyWarhol #CREAMMAGAZINE #popArt #POPCULTURE #popCultureMagazines
0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
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In the company of muses and gods: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
Patti Smith is famous for fusing rock’n’roll with awesome poetry, most notably on her seminal LP
Horses. In this interview, Smith talks about surviving the heady days of the 1960s and ’70s, her peers including Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, liaisons with lover Robert Mapplethorpe, and “keeping it together” throughout the decades.Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Patti, you have a bit of a hoarse voice there. Is it a cold?
Yes, it’s been going around New York and it’s a bit nasty. It makes you have coughing fits. But I feel better now.
And what’s the Patti Smith remedy for a cold?
Just to take steam showers, drink a lot of hot water mixed with lemon and honey, and rest.
Thanks for the advice, Doctor. I’m glad you’re ready to talk. Now, I believe your CV prior to singer/songwriter also revealed a stint in music journalism?
Well, I wasn’t very prolific. I did review some records… some blues artists – The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix. I just did reviews of records that I liked, to help make a living. Really, I was a poet and a writer but I do love rock’n’roll, and writing about rock’n’roll in 1970 was rather new. Anyway, I wrote for Creem [the US-based title] and Rolling Stone.
A few years ago you released ‘Twelve’, an album of covers by artists who were your peers in the ’70s. Did it seem surreal to be, decades down the track, covering songs by artists with whom you’ve shared the stage? And some artists whom you reviewed?
Well, I wrote about Jimi [Hendrix again], and I wrote about Bob Dylan, and I wrote about the Stones, and the Doors. In a way it’s not surprising that the people I was covering were the people I ended up having long relationships with, in that I’d been listening to them for years and had been inspired and influenced by them.
“There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement.” – Patti Smith on covering ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’
Do you record in the studio as though you are performing live?
When we recorded Horses [Smith’s album that constantly makes it into “top 100 albums of all-time” lists] it wasn’t much different to playing live. I didn’t know anything about recording, we just performed in the studio the same way we would perform in a show – with only a little technology. And I still do the same.On ‘Twelve’, you even managed to cover Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, sounding decidedly girly.
Well… I am a girl [laughs], and I was raised on girl groups: the Ronettes, the Crystals, Martha & the Vandellas, and maybe some of that shone through. I think that’s a good thing, and I actually think the ‘girlishness’ is inherent in that song. They were brilliant pop lyrics; very simple, yet they reflect the state and woes of our planet. There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement. It’s as much about corporate greed and my own country’s imperialist acts. But it’s also got a really nice groove.
And on The Beatles’ ‘Within You Without You’, you seem to come across even more down-tempo than George Harrison did. There appears to be a military bent to your take.
I wanted people to hear the lyrics, and I suppose it sounds militant because of the lyrics – which are very stoic. Sure, they have a Hindu philosophy that ‘love can change the world’, but it’s a strong point of view. It does ask us to examine our consciousness – are our goals in life materialistic or spiritual?
Or indeed, both? In today’s global state of affairs, the first thing that came to my mind hearing you recite the lyric ‘Are you one of them?’ was that the war does go on within you and without you, but there is something that you can do about it now if you want to…
Well a lot of good songs are like that. Even Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. It’s a brilliant anti-war song and it’s almost like Mick Jagger asks us to examine our conscience: ‘War, children, it’s a shot away, and love is a kiss away’.
There is this myth about the musicians of your original era, that the new generation assume you were all taking drugs, being decadent, having orgies and so on. Can you clarify that conception?
Well the main aspect of my experimentation was in art. I wrote about things within art, but in terms of myself I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I did not believe that drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots. To me, you took a drug to expand your mind and learn something. Most people did so many drugs but weren’t learning anything. And a lot of people died from them, or they destroyed their brain or their teeth. Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.
It sounds as though it brought you together with some very creative people. You went out with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe for a few years, of course.
I met Robert when I was 20, and he was my boyfriend until we were about 24. Then Robert was evolving, and he found he was more homosexually bent. But we stayed close friends for the rest of his life. We spent hours and hours making art together, but drugs were not the source of our friendship. I had a good time, and I went through some different things in life, but I’ve never been self-destructive. While being self-destructive has its romantic aspects, I’ll tell you it’s also a pain in ass. I think one of the reasons I’m [70-plus] years old and still healthy is that I’ve always been grateful for my gifts – my voice is strong, I’m a mum, I like to work, I travel, I write poetry, I’m still making records.
“I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I didn’t believe drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots.”
It’s a pity so many artists of your time were cut in their prime because of that self-destruction.
I try to talk to young people, of any generation, and if I can tell them anything, it’s to romanticise people’s work but not their lifestyle. Because I met Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and they all died at 27-years-old. And it’s really a tragedy.
Ah, all the Js…
Yes, and I don’t romanticise them being dead at 27. I wish Jimi Hendrix was still alive so I could talk to him, and collaborate with him or just be inspired by him. I mean, in the end, Jimi didn’t want to die. He had a million ideas. But he fucked up, you know. He took a bunch of pills and he drank that night, and he took another pill and he bought tracks. He didn’t commit suicide but he made a mistake. You know, you look at somebody like Jim Morrison; he just drank bottles and bottles and bottles of alcohol and it just totally messed up his body at such a young age. It’s not cool, and it’s not pretty.
It might leave a legacy, but an unfinished one?
Yeah, but it only left any legacy because he did good work. If he were to have just been some good-looking guy that drank himself to death he wouldn’t be much remembered. He’s remembered because he wrote great songs, was a great performer, a poet. And if he would have lived longer, he would have written even greater things. I don’t want anyone to feel I’m judgemental, or like, ‘So she’s old now and she’s going to turn against everything’. It’s not like that. I thought about this stuff when I was 20 years old and it’s why I’m still here, alive and healthy.
“Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.”
I must say, kudos to you for continuing to record to this day. Some people think Patti Smith is ‘one of those heavy singers from the 70s’, but at the end of the day you’re quite a shining example of persistence and survival. And the quality of your new musical and published work are testament to that.
Well thank you. I have seen a lot of stuff, you know. I know all about loss and death. A lot of my people died. Like Robert, my husband, and my brother, my piano player, and my parents. And still – no matter what – I love life. Bad things are going to happen, but there’s always going to be something great to think about and to write about. Your imagination will bring you things. The planets, or the full moon, or a really great book, or somebody has a cool movie out. You fall in love, or meet a really neat person. There’s a million reasons to live.
The above interview appears in the anthology Conversations with Culture Icons by Antonino Tati, available in select outlets including AGWA Design Store (online and physical outlet), Urban Depot (physical outlet), Boundless Books (physical outlet) and select Australia Post outlets.
From the Vault: Boy George on bisexuality, butch versus tenderness, and the difficult side of drag
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Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
https://creammagazine.com/?author=0
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
The other day I got scammed online. It happens to the best of us. Mine was a dodgy subscription through a software company allegedly set up in the Ukraine. At first, I thought it was just an innocent error because, you know, it’s innocent Ukraine (hmmm).
I’d subscribed to a bit of computer software that I didn’t need the full package of, and figured why part with a full $99 when I could just pay a small monthly instalment for ad hoc use, the usual 7 days free trial included. I got my 7 days, cancelled prior to end of the trial, then saw a full year’s payment still went through. Then another year’s. Then another year’s. Repeating even when I’d told my bank to stop them.
Despite the drama and hoops I had to go through to stop the transactions from continuing, I’m still not overtly petrified with dealing with digital services and subscriptions. I don’t think many of us are.
Where once we’d tremble pressing that Subscribe button for fear of being ripped off by some stranger, now we’re inclined to just go with the show, Joe, and suffer the potential bureaucratic consequences afterwards.
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Binge, Disney, PlayStation, Paramount, Prime, Fetch, Stan, Hubbl… there’s at least one of these you’re likely subscribed to. We let these companies take their monthly (sometimes daily) fees and surcharges as we get along with our busy lives, knowing that at the end of the day, there’s a cosy couch to relax to and a host of services to tune into for the full chill experience.
In some cases, the charges are economically priced and fair – at least to start; in other cases it’s an absolute rort, especially the sudden hikes in subscription prices.
Either way, we work our way through this popular streaming channel… that niche digital library… and those newer ‘all-your-media-in-the-one-place’ platforms that only add to the overload, calculating what we owe here and there or, alternatively, forgetting what we’ve subscribed to as our money goes down the digital drain.
The digital subscription phenomenon is a huge one at the moment. Where once media was delivered to us one-way – from television station to our homes, or newspaper publishing house to our front lawn – we’re now sold a perceived advantage of being able to ‘curate’ our own media-receiving portfolio.
But with so many options put forward to us every other week, it becomes less of a clean curation exercise and more of a chaotic crap-fest. Still, we’re signing on in the millions while the owners of these service providers rake in the billions.
According to digital analytics website Stocklytics.com, people worldwide spend around half a trillion dollars on digital media subscriptions and downloads annually. Subscription businesses have grown tremendously over the past couple of years, enduring beyond the pandemic surge.
Roughly half the revenue comes from video games, the market`s largest and highest-grossing segment. Statistics show consumers spent almost $250 billion on video game subscriptions and downloads, translating into an average spending of $205 per user.
While far below video games in total subscription spending, video-on-demand saw even bigger growth. Last year, an average internet user spent $56.5 on video-on-demand subscriptions, seeing global full-year spending jump to nearly $160 billion. This represents a massive 20% increase year-on-year, the biggest among all digital media categories. Digital music subscriptions follow with an 11.7% increase and $36.3 billion in total spending.
Statistics show the US is by far the biggest spender in digital subscriptions, with the average American having spent over $850 on digital media subscriptions and downloads last year – twice as much as Brits or Germans and almost five times more than the global average.
Japanese follow Americans with $150 less in total subscription spending or roughly $700 per internet user. With an average spending of $563 per user, South Korea ranked third, outpacing Western countries like Germany, the UK, and France.
Australians ranked as the 7th highest nation in digital service spending with each of us dishing out over $400 on digital subscriptions and downloads per year.
With digital services being intangible and the buying and selling of these being virtually invisible, it’s an easier market for scam artists to tap into. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) Scamwatch service received 301,791 scam reports in 2023 (up 26 per cent on 2022 and presumably even higher in 2024 and ’25).
Says ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe, “As scammers become increasingly sophisticated in their tactics, it is clear a coordinated response across government, law enforcement and the private sector is essential to combat scams more effectively.”
While our relatively lazy government takes its time responding to combatting scams in Australia, the rest of us will have to remain diligent, perhaps even choosing to press pause on some of the dozens of services we’re willy-nilly subscribing to.
It might mean we have to put up with more annoying ads in the interim but then weren’t they so much worse back in the day when old-school media were dishing them out to us? At least the new ad influx is algorithm-tailored.
Why it might be time to press pause on some of those digital subscription services
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Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
Survival of the Fittest: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
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Andy Warhol: a man of many faces paid homage to in 14 mini figures by Kidrobot
When I think of pop artist Andy Warhol, I automatically picture him in black jeans, black polo and a white pussy-cat wig. The wardrobe was surprisingly minimalist for a man who once splashed so much colour onto canvas.
But occasionally Andy would dress up in the most outlandish of outfits, especially if it was for a dress-up party or a photo shoot for a magazine – like the time he dressed as caped crusader Robin alongside rock singer Nico as Batman in a 1960s spread in Esquire magazine. Andy Warhol as Robin with Velvet Undergound frontwoman Nico as Batman, photographed by Frank Bez.
Warhol also donned boxing gear alongside street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, the pair of them taking the mickey out of everyone’s assumption they often sparred for attention in the art world. And who could forget the various forms of drag Andy executed, even if it meant a just pasty white makeup, ruby red lipstick and lopsided platinum wig that made street hookers look fancy.
So, yes, Andy Warhol did dolly himself up on occasion, despite the regular head-to-toe black he wore.
To commemorate the pop artist in all is sartorial glory, pop vinyl figure creators Kidrobot have released the Many Faces of Andy Warhol series – featuring 14 variants of the greatest pop art icon himself.
Covering three decades of famous looks – from the simple, black glasses and white hair, to the sublime (that time he wore a human skull on his head), each three-inch short figure makes a big statement.
There’s Madison Avenue 1950s, Technicolor 1980s, Point and Shoot Andy, Fright Wig Andy Warhol (a couple of those, actually), and even Space Fruit Andy.
Many looks, then, from the man who knew aesthetics were everything in the superficial world of glamour.
The Many Face of Andy collection is available through Popcultcha. Full set RRP $479 but it’s currently on special for $399.99.
Alternativley, you can purchase a blind box from the range and be surprise by what you get, at just $10.99 per mini figure, at the Andy Warhol collection on kidrobot.com.
Three of our favourite things from pop culture website, the boldly named Stupid Krap
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#andyWarhol #CREAMMAGAZINE #popArt #POPCULTURE #popCultureMagazines
0 boosts 0 favoritesGround Control to Major Don: 60 Years of ‘Lost in Space’, an interview with actor Mark Goddard
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In the company of muses and gods: an interview with rock poet Patti Smith from the Cream archives
Patti Smith is famous for fusing rock’n’roll with awesome poetry, most notably on her seminal LP
Horses. In this interview, Smith talks about surviving the heady days of the 1960s and ’70s, her peers including Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, liaisons with lover Robert Mapplethorpe, and “keeping it together” throughout the decades.Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Patti, you have a bit of a hoarse voice there. Is it a cold?
Yes, it’s been going around New York and it’s a bit nasty. It makes you have coughing fits. But I feel better now.
And what’s the Patti Smith remedy for a cold?
Just to take steam showers, drink a lot of hot water mixed with lemon and honey, and rest.
Thanks for the advice, Doctor. I’m glad you’re ready to talk. Now, I believe your CV prior to singer/songwriter also revealed a stint in music journalism?
Well, I wasn’t very prolific. I did review some records… some blues artists – The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix. I just did reviews of records that I liked, to help make a living. Really, I was a poet and a writer but I do love rock’n’roll, and writing about rock’n’roll in 1970 was rather new. Anyway, I wrote for Creem [the US-based title] and Rolling Stone.
A few years ago you released ‘Twelve’, an album of covers by artists who were your peers in the ’70s. Did it seem surreal to be, decades down the track, covering songs by artists with whom you’ve shared the stage? And some artists whom you reviewed?
Well, I wrote about Jimi [Hendrix again], and I wrote about Bob Dylan, and I wrote about the Stones, and the Doors. In a way it’s not surprising that the people I was covering were the people I ended up having long relationships with, in that I’d been listening to them for years and had been inspired and influenced by them.
“There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement.” – Patti Smith on covering ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’
Do you record in the studio as though you are performing live?
When we recorded Horses [Smith’s album that constantly makes it into “top 100 albums of all-time” lists] it wasn’t much different to playing live. I didn’t know anything about recording, we just performed in the studio the same way we would perform in a show – with only a little technology. And I still do the same.On ‘Twelve’, you even managed to cover Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’, sounding decidedly girly.
Well… I am a girl [laughs], and I was raised on girl groups: the Ronettes, the Crystals, Martha & the Vandellas, and maybe some of that shone through. I think that’s a good thing, and I actually think the ‘girlishness’ is inherent in that song. They were brilliant pop lyrics; very simple, yet they reflect the state and woes of our planet. There’s a very small percentage of people that do want to rule the world, about 1% – the rich, the corporate, and the powerful – but I did that song really as a political statement. It’s as much about corporate greed and my own country’s imperialist acts. But it’s also got a really nice groove.
And on The Beatles’ ‘Within You Without You’, you seem to come across even more down-tempo than George Harrison did. There appears to be a military bent to your take.
I wanted people to hear the lyrics, and I suppose it sounds militant because of the lyrics – which are very stoic. Sure, they have a Hindu philosophy that ‘love can change the world’, but it’s a strong point of view. It does ask us to examine our consciousness – are our goals in life materialistic or spiritual?
Or indeed, both? In today’s global state of affairs, the first thing that came to my mind hearing you recite the lyric ‘Are you one of them?’ was that the war does go on within you and without you, but there is something that you can do about it now if you want to…
Well a lot of good songs are like that. Even Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. It’s a brilliant anti-war song and it’s almost like Mick Jagger asks us to examine our conscience: ‘War, children, it’s a shot away, and love is a kiss away’.
There is this myth about the musicians of your original era, that the new generation assume you were all taking drugs, being decadent, having orgies and so on. Can you clarify that conception?
Well the main aspect of my experimentation was in art. I wrote about things within art, but in terms of myself I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I did not believe that drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots. To me, you took a drug to expand your mind and learn something. Most people did so many drugs but weren’t learning anything. And a lot of people died from them, or they destroyed their brain or their teeth. Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.
It sounds as though it brought you together with some very creative people. You went out with photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe for a few years, of course.
I met Robert when I was 20, and he was my boyfriend until we were about 24. Then Robert was evolving, and he found he was more homosexually bent. But we stayed close friends for the rest of his life. We spent hours and hours making art together, but drugs were not the source of our friendship. I had a good time, and I went through some different things in life, but I’ve never been self-destructive. While being self-destructive has its romantic aspects, I’ll tell you it’s also a pain in ass. I think one of the reasons I’m [70-plus] years old and still healthy is that I’ve always been grateful for my gifts – my voice is strong, I’m a mum, I like to work, I travel, I write poetry, I’m still making records.
“I’ve always had a very different view of drugs that my generation did. I didn’t believe drugs were for recreational use. I believed drugs were sacred. And I didn’t relate to the drug culture. I knew so many people that took them, and they looked like babbling idiots.”
It’s a pity so many artists of your time were cut in their prime because of that self-destruction.
I try to talk to young people, of any generation, and if I can tell them anything, it’s to romanticise people’s work but not their lifestyle. Because I met Jim Morrison, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and they all died at 27-years-old. And it’s really a tragedy.
Ah, all the Js…
Yes, and I don’t romanticise them being dead at 27. I wish Jimi Hendrix was still alive so I could talk to him, and collaborate with him or just be inspired by him. I mean, in the end, Jimi didn’t want to die. He had a million ideas. But he fucked up, you know. He took a bunch of pills and he drank that night, and he took another pill and he bought tracks. He didn’t commit suicide but he made a mistake. You know, you look at somebody like Jim Morrison; he just drank bottles and bottles and bottles of alcohol and it just totally messed up his body at such a young age. It’s not cool, and it’s not pretty.
It might leave a legacy, but an unfinished one?
Yeah, but it only left any legacy because he did good work. If he were to have just been some good-looking guy that drank himself to death he wouldn’t be much remembered. He’s remembered because he wrote great songs, was a great performer, a poet. And if he would have lived longer, he would have written even greater things. I don’t want anyone to feel I’m judgemental, or like, ‘So she’s old now and she’s going to turn against everything’. It’s not like that. I thought about this stuff when I was 20 years old and it’s why I’m still here, alive and healthy.
“Me, I smoked pot, I hung around with a lot of Rastafarians, and I took acid a couple of times, but I took it seriously. Every time I’ve taken a drug, I’ve done something with it. Like with pot, I’d write poetry. I’d use it for something creative.”
I must say, kudos to you for continuing to record to this day. Some people think Patti Smith is ‘one of those heavy singers from the 70s’, but at the end of the day you’re quite a shining example of persistence and survival. And the quality of your new musical and published work are testament to that.
Well thank you. I have seen a lot of stuff, you know. I know all about loss and death. A lot of my people died. Like Robert, my husband, and my brother, my piano player, and my parents. And still – no matter what – I love life. Bad things are going to happen, but there’s always going to be something great to think about and to write about. Your imagination will bring you things. The planets, or the full moon, or a really great book, or somebody has a cool movie out. You fall in love, or meet a really neat person. There’s a million reasons to live.
The above interview appears in the anthology Conversations with Culture Icons by Antonino Tati, available in select outlets including AGWA Design Store (online and physical outlet), Urban Depot (physical outlet), Boundless Books (physical outlet) and select Australia Post outlets.
From the Vault: Boy George on bisexuality, butch versus tenderness, and the difficult side of drag
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#anNie #annNie #classic #CREAMMAGAZINE #interview #JohannKim #JohannKimPigeonhole #ostinTorre #paratorePhotography #pattiSmith #pattiSmithAndHerBandTour #paulOConnor #philParatore #philipParatore #PhilipParatorePhotographers #phillipParatore #photographerPhilipParatore #pigeonholeAnNie #pigeonholeAnnNie #pigeonholeStore #POPCULTURE #rock #soniaAudino
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Meta to pay $26 billion damages in a wake-up call for advertisers and threat to Facebook and Instagram survival
Meta has been forced to pay up to $26 billion (around US$18 billion) to settle a landmark US case over the alleged harm its platforms have caused children and teenagers. The recent finding is yet another majorly expensive headache for Facebook and Instagram since it could force marketers to rethink the way they reach the next generation, possibly turning away from these usual social media platforms.
The settlement resolves claims that Meta deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young people.
In addition to the enormous payout, Meta has agreed to impose significant new restrictions on under-18 internet users, including capping their daily usage limits, initiating overnight access blocks, reducing notifications, and insisting on greater parental control over feeds and settings. Stronger age verification and restrictions around personalised content are also part of the changes.
For marketers, however, the bigger story may be what happens when young consumers become harder to reach through the platforms that have dominated digital advertising for more than a decade?
Teenagers have long represented an attractive audience for brands, particularly in fashion, beauty, entertainment, food and technology. But if their time online is deliberately reduced, marketers may have fewer opportunities to rely on endless scrolling, algorithmic recommendations and highly personalised feeds to deliver messages.
It could accelerate a return to more considered forms of engagement: creator partnerships, communities, live experiences, retail activations, music and culture, and content that audiences actively seek out rather than passively consume.
There is another potential ripple effect. Meta is urging competitors – including TikTok and YouTube – to adopt similar protections, meaning the changes could spread across the social media landscape.
For marketers, the lesson is simple: the information economy may be entering an age where attention can no longer be taken for granted.
Personally, we cannot wait for the comeuppance to reach Facebook and Instagram – those purveyors of slop over quality content, and restrictors of all that is actually enlightening, truly funny, and good.
Michael Mastess & Antonino Tati
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
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#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #damaged #facebook #facebookClosing #facebookToShutDown #instagram #instagramClosing #meta #michaelMastess #POPCULTURE #restrictions #schoolRemix #socialMedia #sued #under18s -
Meta to pay $26 billion damages in a wake-up call for advertisers and threat to Facebook and Instagram survival
Meta has been forced to pay up to $26 billion (around US$18 billion) to settle a landmark US case over the alleged harm its platforms have caused children and teenagers. The recent finding is yet another majorly expensive headache for Facebook and Instagram since it could force marketers to rethink the way they reach the next generation, possibly turning away from these usual social media platforms.
The settlement resolves claims that Meta deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young people.
In addition to the enormous payout, Meta has agreed to impose significant new restrictions on under-18 internet users, including capping their daily usage limits, initiating overnight access blocks, reducing notifications, and insisting on greater parental control over feeds and settings. Stronger age verification and restrictions around personalised content are also part of the changes.
For marketers, however, the bigger story may be what happens when young consumers become harder to reach through the platforms that have dominated digital advertising for more than a decade?
Teenagers have long represented an attractive audience for brands, particularly in fashion, beauty, entertainment, food and technology. But if their time online is deliberately reduced, marketers may have fewer opportunities to rely on endless scrolling, algorithmic recommendations and highly personalised feeds to deliver messages.
It could accelerate a return to more considered forms of engagement: creator partnerships, communities, live experiences, retail activations, music and culture, and content that audiences actively seek out rather than passively consume.
There is another potential ripple effect. Meta is urging competitors – including TikTok and YouTube – to adopt similar protections, meaning the changes could spread across the social media landscape.
For marketers, the lesson is simple: the information economy may be entering an age where attention can no longer be taken for granted.
Personally, we cannot wait for the comeuppance to reach Facebook and Instagram – those purveyors of slop over quality content, and restrictors of all that is actually enlightening, truly funny, and good.
Michael Mastess & Antonino Tati
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
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#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #damaged #facebook #facebookClosing #facebookToShutDown #instagram #instagramClosing #meta #michaelMastess #POPCULTURE #restrictions #schoolRemix #socialMedia #sued #under18s -
Meta to pay $26 billion damages in a wake-up call for advertisers and threat to Facebook and Instagram survival
Meta has been forced to pay up to $26 billion (around US$18 billion) to settle a landmark US case over the alleged harm its platforms have caused children and teenagers. The recent finding is yet another majorly expensive headache for Facebook and Instagram since it could force marketers to rethink the way they reach the next generation, possibly turning away from these usual social media platforms.
The settlement resolves claims that Meta deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young people.
In addition to the enormous payout, Meta has agreed to impose significant new restrictions on under-18 internet users, including capping their daily usage limits, initiating overnight access blocks, reducing notifications, and insisting on greater parental control over feeds and settings. Stronger age verification and restrictions around personalised content are also part of the changes.
For marketers, however, the bigger story may be what happens when young consumers become harder to reach through the platforms that have dominated digital advertising for more than a decade?
Teenagers have long represented an attractive audience for brands, particularly in fashion, beauty, entertainment, food and technology. But if their time online is deliberately reduced, marketers may have fewer opportunities to rely on endless scrolling, algorithmic recommendations and highly personalised feeds to deliver messages.
It could accelerate a return to more considered forms of engagement: creator partnerships, communities, live experiences, retail activations, music and culture, and content that audiences actively seek out rather than passively consume.
There is another potential ripple effect. Meta is urging competitors – including TikTok and YouTube – to adopt similar protections, meaning the changes could spread across the social media landscape.
For marketers, the lesson is simple: the information economy may be entering an age where attention can no longer be taken for granted.
Personally, we cannot wait for the comeuppance to reach Facebook and Instagram – those purveyors of slop over quality content, and restrictors of all that is actually enlightening, truly funny, and good.
Michael Mastess & Antonino Tati
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #damaged #facebook #facebookClosing #facebookToShutDown #instagram #instagramClosing #meta #michaelMastess #POPCULTURE #restrictions #schoolRemix #socialMedia #sued #under18s -
Meta to pay $26 billion damages in a wake-up call for advertisers and threat to Facebook and Instagram survival
Meta has been forced to pay up to $26 billion (around US$18 billion) to settle a landmark US case over the alleged harm its platforms have caused children and teenagers. The recent finding is yet another majorly expensive headache for Facebook and Instagram since it could force marketers to rethink the way they reach the next generation, possibly turning away from these usual social media platforms.
The settlement resolves claims that Meta deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young people.
In addition to the enormous payout, Meta has agreed to impose significant new restrictions on under-18 internet users, including capping their daily usage limits, initiating overnight access blocks, reducing notifications, and insisting on greater parental control over feeds and settings. Stronger age verification and restrictions around personalised content are also part of the changes.
For marketers, however, the bigger story may be what happens when young consumers become harder to reach through the platforms that have dominated digital advertising for more than a decade?
Teenagers have long represented an attractive audience for brands, particularly in fashion, beauty, entertainment, food and technology. But if their time online is deliberately reduced, marketers may have fewer opportunities to rely on endless scrolling, algorithmic recommendations and highly personalised feeds to deliver messages.
It could accelerate a return to more considered forms of engagement: creator partnerships, communities, live experiences, retail activations, music and culture, and content that audiences actively seek out rather than passively consume.
There is another potential ripple effect. Meta is urging competitors – including TikTok and YouTube – to adopt similar protections, meaning the changes could spread across the social media landscape.
For marketers, the lesson is simple: the information economy may be entering an age where attention can no longer be taken for granted.
Personally, we cannot wait for the comeuppance to reach Facebook and Instagram – those purveyors of slop over quality content, and restrictors of all that is actually enlightening, truly funny, and good.
Michael Mastess & Antonino Tati
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #damaged #facebook #facebookClosing #facebookToShutDown #instagram #instagramClosing #meta #michaelMastess #POPCULTURE #restrictions #schoolRemix #socialMedia #sued #under18s -
Meta to pay $26 billion damages in a wake-up call for advertisers and threat to Facebook and Instagram survival
Meta has been forced to pay up to $26 billion (around US$18 billion) to settle a landmark US case over the alleged harm its platforms have caused children and teenagers. The recent finding is yet another majorly expensive headache for Facebook and Instagram since it could force marketers to rethink the way they reach the next generation, possibly turning away from these usual social media platforms.
The settlement resolves claims that Meta deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among young people.
In addition to the enormous payout, Meta has agreed to impose significant new restrictions on under-18 internet users, including capping their daily usage limits, initiating overnight access blocks, reducing notifications, and insisting on greater parental control over feeds and settings. Stronger age verification and restrictions around personalised content are also part of the changes.
For marketers, however, the bigger story may be what happens when young consumers become harder to reach through the platforms that have dominated digital advertising for more than a decade?
Teenagers have long represented an attractive audience for brands, particularly in fashion, beauty, entertainment, food and technology. But if their time online is deliberately reduced, marketers may have fewer opportunities to rely on endless scrolling, algorithmic recommendations and highly personalised feeds to deliver messages.
It could accelerate a return to more considered forms of engagement: creator partnerships, communities, live experiences, retail activations, music and culture, and content that audiences actively seek out rather than passively consume.
There is another potential ripple effect. Meta is urging competitors – including TikTok and YouTube – to adopt similar protections, meaning the changes could spread across the social media landscape.
For marketers, the lesson is simple: the information economy may be entering an age where attention can no longer be taken for granted.
Personally, we cannot wait for the comeuppance to reach Facebook and Instagram – those purveyors of slop over quality content, and restrictors of all that is actually enlightening, truly funny, and good.
Michael Mastess & Antonino Tati
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #damaged #facebook #facebookClosing #facebookToShutDown #instagram #instagramClosing #meta #michaelMastess #POPCULTURE #restrictions #schoolRemix #socialMedia #sued #under18s -
#HappyBirthdayWWW {The World Wide Web 35 Years On}
On this day, August 23, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee unleashed a huge digital wonder unto the world. The scientist’s proposal for a ‘hypertext project’ came to fruition in 1991, at the CERN laboratories in Switzerland as the ‘World Wide Web’ was opened to outside users.Berners-Lee also considered calling his system ‘The Information Mine’ but figured that didn’t have a good enough ring to it. Fast forward to 2026 and the World Wide Web, as it was ultimately christened – eventually just becoming the ‘web’, celebrates its public 35th birthday. And it’s something well worth celebrating.
Three and a half decades of online social networking, individual blogging, independent fundraising, tacky TikTok dancing, hyper-addictive shopping, Instagram bragging, international gaming, Uber-booking, and Wiki-leaking. Of cute kittens-falling-in-love-with-elephants videos, flash-in-the-pan YouTube sensations, digital matchmaking, Hightail file-sharing, selfie infatuations, and virtual bullying. Not to mention the endless abyss of porn available at our grubby fingertips.
Without the World Wide Web, we wouldn’t be able to sum up the day’s news in a strict number of characters or less (but, really, who still uses X?). We wouldn’t have the privilege of keeping in touch with old friends whom we actually couldn’t be bothered sharing pleasantries with face-to-face. And we certainly wouldn’t be able to instantly find the answer to the question, “What crap has Kim Kardashian been up to today?”
And now that Ai has arrived, well, the party’s just begun.
Without the information superhighway (as it was once affectionately referred to) we’d be void of all the useful information that makes us, er, smarter. And all the useless information that makes us think “we’re smarter that that”. We’d have no idea if the trains were running on time until we’d heard some codger tell us two hours too late on the morning ‘news’. We wouldn’t get to hear snippets of the latest music releases before committing a full 99 cents to download a song. And, yes, we wouldn’t be able to illegally download the occasional bootleg.
The World Wide Web offers us mini doses of enlightenment every second of every day. Without it, it’d be like living in the dark ages. On a more profound note, it has opened the floodgates of democracy, allowing us to have our say on virtually any topic or subject, gradually chipping away at centuries-old ideological and social-behavioural constructs (ie: not always the right ways to think and behave).
“The web is an artificial creation, as are our laws and our constitutions. We can choose how they work, or we can make new ones. It’s our choice.”
To this day, Berners-Lee is optimistic about a medium that allows for “free and uncensored” commentary, and has expressed his concern that the democracy of the web might soon be a thing of the past. He said in an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on Reddit.com (dubbed “the front page of the Internet”), “I’m concerned and excited about the web’s future. I think some monitoring of the net by government agencies is going to be needed to fight crime [but] we need to invent a new system of checks and balances with unprecedented power to be able to investigate and hold the agencies which do it accountable to the public.”
Continues the man of many wise words, “The web is an artificial creation, as are our laws and our constitutions. We can choose how they work, or we can make new ones. It’s our choice.”
On a lighter note, darling oldies might still be calling Facebook ‘MySpacebook’ but even octagenerians are adept at web-trawling today. At 56 myself, I don’t know how I would have gotten along with business and leisure if we didn’t have the web. It helps each of us get messages across even when those messages contain kooky errors; it leads to consistent and enjoyable communication (so long as you turn a blind eye to online trolling); and, even with all its linguistic blunders and information overload, it’s as entertaining as all hell. Especially when you start to teach Ai who’s the real boss in this big, messy picture.
So, Happy Birthday to you, World Wide Web. I’ll save on not buying you a Hallmark card and simply sent you a few emojis instead. 😎💋🎁🍹🍰
The Rise of Techno Spirituality: turning the bits and bytes into something with real meaning
Pure Elements: haircare products that are pure in name and nature
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
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Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of this D&G has been the result of said decadent era), but it was a time at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming and if I subscribed to every channel and streaming platform, I’d be even more overwhelmed. Also, I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Gosh they used to have smarts and manners in the ’90s, sending us writers things “for our consideration” – not redundantly wasting time on the consideration of witless influencers. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Bret. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
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8 Great Things David Lynch Taught Me
Few artists and creators have bent television to their will quite like David Lynch. Equal parts surrealist storyteller and culture/community provocateur, Lynch built a reputation on uncanny films like Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire which made the everyday feel quietly sinister. But it was his groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks that cracked open the entertainment mediums, blending soap opera, crime drama and dream logic into something entirely new and beautifully bizarre.
The series follows the surreal investigation into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in a fictional Pacific Northwest logging town. Here, the everyday mundane are turned into things altogether thrilling, dangerous, sometimes even fatal (indeed, it starts with a scene of Laura’s dead body fished out of the town lake while throwing the viewer right into the deep end).
What starts as a standard who-done-it murder mystery soon spirals into a mind-bending, fever dream filled with backward-talking, decadently decorated rooms whose walls hold dark secrets, and alternate dimensions. If audiences turned to television to escape, ‘Twin Peaks’ took them way out of this world.
When the series first aired internationally in April 1990, it sparked a sense that strange things in popular culture were about to become, well, more popular and even stranger. It was quite possibly the first television series to question normalcy, challenging traditional stereotypes, and basically putting the fucked-up condition of being human (dead or alive) on mass display for all to ogle and feel oddly familiar with. You could say Twin Peaks was the blueprint for all the alternative television that permeates TV guides today.
Decades on, Twin Peaks’ influence still hums beneath modern – mostly steam – TV. So what exactly did Lynch teach us?
1. That red is a naughty colour
Whether it’s the cherry whose stem Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) ties into a knot with her tongue, or the tall velvet curtains that bled against the black-and-white zig-zag flooring in those warped rooms, red was where it’s at when it came to Lynch’s colour palette and, indeed, palate. His taste for the colour was as impeccable as Akira Kurosawa’s knowledge of it being a potent, seductive, sometimes unnerving colour. Marketers know this full well, which is why different reds are the most shades you see in lipstick collections, and why every brand – from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola – loves to see the colour bleed from their neon signs and logos. Put on rose-coloured glasses, and you won’t see the red. Glasses off, then…
2. Small towns aren’t as innocent as they seem
Behind white picket fences, nice cherry pie, and darn good coffee lies something darker. Twin Peaks revealed that beneath the façade of wholesome Americana lurks secrecy, violence – including rape and murder – and moral ambiguity.
3. Dreams are a language worth listening to
Lynch doesn’t treat dreams as narrative fluff; to him they held relative clues. Symbolic, disjointed and emotionally charged, dreams often carry more truth than the waking world.
4. Tone is everything
Humour and horror can coexist. One moment you’re laughing at a deadpan exchange; the next, you’re unsettled by something you can’t quite explain. Lynch showed that tonal whiplash can be a feature, not a flaw.
5. Not every mystery needs solving
In a culture obsessed with answers, Twin Peaks embraced ambiguity. Some questions remain open, inviting viewers to sit with uncertainty rather than resolving it.
6. Sound and mood are excellent storytelling tools
From Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score to the persistent hum of electricity to silent atomic explosions going off, atmosphere does as much narrative work as dialogue. Lynch teaches us to feel a story, not just follow it, and a lot of that comes from sound or the lack of it in intense moments. In the end, Twin Peaks isn’t just a show – it’s a mood, a puzzle, and a quiet dare to see the world differently. And in our uncanny digital age, combined with socio-economic stressors and the death of context in media, we’ve pretty much got no choice but to view the world from a new, alternative perspective.7. The beauty and importance of Transcendental Meditation
In real life, David Lynch talked a lot of the benefits of Transcendental Meditation (or TM for short). TM is a simple mental technique in which you silently repeat a mantra to allow the active mind to naturally settle inward, accessing a state of “restful alertness”. It helps you reduce stress and can take the mind to great places. For more information about TM, click here.
8. That art doesn’t need to make sense.
Lynch famously argued that art doesn’t need to make rational sense, noting: “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.” As well as television and film-maker, David was a wonderful artist who painted regularly. He actually studied fine arts and only began making films as a way to animate his paintings and bring movement to his canvases. A true multimedia artist, then.
Brilliant and outré film and TV director David Lynch has died, aged 78
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8 Great Things David Lynch Taught Me
Few artists and creators have bent television to their will quite like David Lynch. Equal parts surrealist storyteller and culture/community provocateur, Lynch built a reputation on uncanny films like Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire which made the everyday feel quietly sinister. But it was his groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks that cracked open the entertainment mediums, blending soap opera, crime drama and dream logic into something entirely new and beautifully bizarre.
The series follows the surreal investigation into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in a fictional Pacific Northwest logging town. Here, the everyday mundane are turned into things altogether thrilling, dangerous, sometimes even fatal (indeed, it starts with a scene of Laura’s dead body fished out of the town lake while throwing the viewer right into the deep end).
What starts as a standard who-done-it murder mystery soon spirals into a mind-bending, fever dream filled with backward-talking, decadently decorated rooms whose walls hold dark secrets, and alternate dimensions. If audiences turned to television to escape, ‘Twin Peaks’ took them way out of this world.
When the series first aired internationally in April 1990, it sparked a sense that strange things in popular culture were about to become, well, more popular and even stranger. It was quite possibly the first television series to question normalcy, challenging traditional stereotypes, and basically putting the fucked-up condition of being human (dead or alive) on mass display for all to ogle and feel oddly familiar with. You could say Twin Peaks was the blueprint for all the alternative television that permeates TV guides today.
Decades on, Twin Peaks’ influence still hums beneath modern – mostly steam – TV. So what exactly did Lynch teach us?
1. That red is a naughty colour
Whether it’s the cherry whose stem Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) ties into a knot with her tongue, or the tall velvet curtains that bled against the black-and-white zig-zag flooring in those warped rooms, red was where it’s at when it came to Lynch’s colour palette and, indeed, palate. His taste for the colour was as impeccable as Akira Kurosawa’s knowledge of it being a potent, seductive, sometimes unnerving colour. Marketers know this full well, which is why different reds are the most shades you see in lipstick collections, and why every brand – from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola – loves to see the colour bleed from their neon signs and logos. Put on rose-coloured glasses, and you won’t see the red. Glasses off, then…
2. Small towns aren’t as innocent as they seem
Behind white picket fences, nice cherry pie, and darn good coffee lies something darker. Twin Peaks revealed that beneath the façade of wholesome Americana lurks secrecy, violence – including rape and murder – and moral ambiguity.
3. Dreams are a language worth listening to
Lynch doesn’t treat dreams as narrative fluff; to him they held relative clues. Symbolic, disjointed and emotionally charged, dreams often carry more truth than the waking world.
4. Tone is everything
Humour and horror can coexist. One moment you’re laughing at a deadpan exchange; the next, you’re unsettled by something you can’t quite explain. Lynch showed that tonal whiplash can be a feature, not a flaw.
5. Not every mystery needs solving
In a culture obsessed with answers, Twin Peaks embraced ambiguity. Some questions remain open, inviting viewers to sit with uncertainty rather than resolving it.
6. Sound and mood are excellent storytelling tools
From Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score to the persistent hum of electricity to silent atomic explosions going off, atmosphere does as much narrative work as dialogue. Lynch teaches us to feel a story, not just follow it, and a lot of that comes from sound or the lack of it in intense moments. In the end, Twin Peaks isn’t just a show – it’s a mood, a puzzle, and a quiet dare to see the world differently. And in our uncanny digital age, combined with socio-economic stressors and the death of context in media, we’ve pretty much got no choice but to view the world from a new, alternative perspective.7. The beauty and importance of Transcendental Meditation
In real life, David Lynch talked a lot of the benefits of Transcendental Meditation (or TM for short). TM is a simple mental technique in which you silently repeat a mantra to allow the active mind to naturally settle inward, accessing a state of “restful alertness”. It helps you reduce stress and can take the mind to great places. For more information about TM, click here.
8. That art doesn’t need to make sense.
Lynch famously argued that art doesn’t need to make rational sense, noting: “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.” As well as television and film-maker, David was a wonderful artist who painted regularly. He actually studied fine arts and only began making films as a way to animate his paintings and bring movement to his canvases. A true multimedia artist, then.
Brilliant and outré film and TV director David Lynch has died, aged 78
Curating the Ultimate Luxury Weekend Getaway in the Heart of Sydney
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #davidLynch #FILM #POPCULTURE #theLegacyOfDavidLynch #tv #twinPeaks #twistedTelevision #whoKilledLauraPalmer -
The new Oura 5 Ring is so light and unobtrusive you forget you’re wearing it: Here are 5 more positive things about this handsome smart ring
As someone who doesn’t wear a watch, nor jewellery too often, I’m so glad I’ve been introduced to the Oura Ring 5. The new model ring is not only smaller, but boasts some bonus functions and extra specs that were missing in the Oura 4.
For anyone not familiar with this stat-reading product, the Oura can best be described as an attractive, traditional-looking ring that tracks the user’s sleep, activity, stress levels, temperature, and general health monitoring.
The new petite size of the Oura Ring 5 is probably it’s greatest selling point, and here at Cream, we believe the best technology is increasingly that which we forget we’re wearing. Even in an accessory sense, you don’t want to be too conscious of the jewellery you’re wearing. That way, when someone comments on a piece (and I’ve received plenty of comments and compliments on the Oura) your response is more one of casual surprise as opposed to eye-rolling expectation. So, yes, size matters when it comes to an Oura ring, and in our view, the smaller and lighter the ring, the better.
Here are five more great things about the new Oura Ring 5.
01. It’s not only smaller but much more comfortable
This is probably the most immediately obvious upgrade. Oura reports that the Ring 5 has 40% less volume than the Ring 4, measuring 6.09mm wide and 2.28mm thick versus 7.9mm and about 2.88mm. The redesigned, flatter sensor arrangement also makes the inside feel less intrusive. Basically, it feels less like wearing a piece of technology and more like wearing an actual ring.
02. The sensors are smarter, improving accuracy
This is the big one, technically. Oura has redesigned the optical sensing system, with shorter light paths, more efficient LEDs and improved sensor positioning. There’s better accuracy in overnight heart rate variability, by 12%, and closer to 20% improvement in accuracy of heart rate during activities such as walking, running and cycling, compared with the Oura 4.03. Battery life is longer
Your Oura ring comes with a small but speedy battery charger, and most users find a full charge to last about a full week.
Energy gets a good bump up in the Oura Ring 5. In fact, one full charge sees the ring reading your stats for a solid week, sometimes even up to 9 days depending on your levels of activity and its analysing of these, whereas I found the Ring 4 often only lasted for a week. We realise that longer batter life is not surprising in progressing models of technology, but with a wearable bit of smart tech like this – whose whole purpose is continuous monitoring, particularly overnight – that extra day or two can make all the difference. You spend less time thinking about charging it and more time actually wearing it. That said, it charges fairly quickly.
04. It’s lighter and less visually ‘techy’
The combination of the slimmer profile, lower weight and redesigned sensors makes Ring 5 considerably more discreet. And of course it’s available in several finishes, including a new Deep Rose. Oura has really pushed the jewellery rather than gadget aesthetic this time. The lightness of the ring means it is unobtrusive, hence you’re much more likely to leave it on 24/7 and that of course means better data.
05. The health insights are becoming more proactive
This is slightly different from the hardware improvements. Ring 5 launches alongside newer software experiences including ‘Health Radar’, which is designed to flag potential changes in areas such as cardiovascular and respiratory health. There are also new health-oriented insights – mostly to assist users taking diabetic/weight loss medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy – and some new AI-enabled medical guidance. For those who have invested in an Oura Ring 4, don’t panic as Oura says many of these new software experiences are also coming to Gen 3 and the Ring 4, so everybody’s happy.So, with its better sensing, smaller design and more comfortable fit, plus a better battery life, this ring is definitely having more outings alongside the Cartier. Now, I know I did say I don’t wear jewellery often but I’m getting used to both rings being worn now.
The Ōura Ring 5 is available in a variety of colours and textures. To view these, and for pricing, visit ouraring.com.
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Pure Elements: haircare products that are pure in name and nature
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The new Oura 5 Ring is so light and unobtrusive you forget you’re wearing it: Here are 5 more positive things about this handsome smart ring
As someone who doesn’t wear a watch, nor jewellery too often, I’m so glad I’ve been introduced to the Oura Ring 5. The new model ring is not only smaller, but boasts some bonus functions and extra specs that were missing in the Oura 4.
For anyone not familiar with this stat-reading product, the Oura can best be described as an attractive, traditional-looking ring that tracks the user’s sleep, activity, stress levels, temperature, and general health monitoring.
The new petite size of the Oura Ring 5 is probably it’s greatest selling point, and here at Cream, we believe the best technology is increasingly that which we forget we’re wearing. Even in an accessory sense, you don’t want to be too conscious of the jewellery you’re wearing. That way, when someone comments on a piece (and I’ve received plenty of comments and compliments on the Oura) your response is more one of casual surprise as opposed to eye-rolling expectation. So, yes, size matters when it comes to an Oura ring, and in our view, the smaller and lighter the ring, the better.
Here are five more great things about the new Oura Ring 5.
01. It’s not only smaller but much more comfortable
This is probably the most immediately obvious upgrade. Oura reports that the Ring 5 has 40% less volume than the Ring 4, measuring 6.09mm wide and 2.28mm thick versus 7.9mm and about 2.88mm. The redesigned, flatter sensor arrangement also makes the inside feel less intrusive. Basically, it feels less like wearing a piece of technology and more like wearing an actual ring.
02. The sensors are smarter, improving accuracy
This is the big one, technically. Oura has redesigned the optical sensing system, with shorter light paths, more efficient LEDs and improved sensor positioning. There’s better accuracy in overnight heart rate variability, by 12%, and closer to 20% improvement in accuracy of heart rate during activities such as walking, running and cycling, compared with the Oura 4.03. Battery life is longer
Your Oura ring comes with a small but speedy battery charger, and most users find a full charge to last about a full week.
Energy gets a good bump up in the Oura Ring 5. In fact, one full charge sees the ring reading your stats for a solid week, sometimes even up to 9 days depending on your levels of activity and its analysing of these, whereas I found the Ring 4 often only lasted for a week. We realise that longer batter life is not surprising in progressing models of technology, but with a wearable bit of smart tech like this – whose whole purpose is continuous monitoring, particularly overnight – that extra day or two can make all the difference. You spend less time thinking about charging it and more time actually wearing it. That said, it charges fairly quickly.
04. It’s lighter and less visually ‘techy’
The combination of the slimmer profile, lower weight and redesigned sensors makes Ring 5 considerably more discreet. And of course it’s available in several finishes, including a new Deep Rose. Oura has really pushed the jewellery rather than gadget aesthetic this time. The lightness of the ring means it is unobtrusive, hence you’re much more likely to leave it on 24/7 and that of course means better data.
05. The health insights are becoming more proactive
This is slightly different from the hardware improvements. Ring 5 launches alongside newer software experiences including ‘Health Radar’, which is designed to flag potential changes in areas such as cardiovascular and respiratory health. There are also new health-oriented insights – mostly to assist users taking diabetic/weight loss medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy – and some new AI-enabled medical guidance. For those who have invested in an Oura Ring 4, don’t panic as Oura says many of these new software experiences are also coming to Gen 3 and the Ring 4, so everybody’s happy.So, with its better sensing, smaller design and more comfortable fit, plus a better battery life, this ring is definitely having more outings alongside the Cartier. Now, I know I did say I don’t wear jewellery often but I’m getting used to both rings being worn now.
The Ōura Ring 5 is available in a variety of colours and textures. To view these, and for pricing, visit ouraring.com.
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Pure Elements: haircare products that are pure in name and nature
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #foundObjects01BlockAd #highTech #oura5Ring #ouraRing #ouraRing5 #REVIEWS #tech #technology #Ōura -
The new Oura 5 Ring is so light and unobtrusive you forget you’re wearing it: Here are 5 more positive things about this handsome smart ring
As someone who doesn’t wear a watch, nor jewellery too often, I’m so glad I’ve been introduced to the Oura Ring 5. The new model ring is not only smaller, but boasts some bonus functions and extra specs that were missing in the Oura 4.
For anyone not familiar with this stat-reading product, the Oura can best be described as an attractive, traditional-looking ring that tracks the user’s sleep, activity, stress levels, temperature, and general health monitoring.
The new petite size of the Oura Ring 5 is probably it’s greatest selling point, and here at Cream, we believe the best technology is increasingly that which we forget we’re wearing. Even in an accessory sense, you don’t want to be too conscious of the jewellery you’re wearing. That way, when someone comments on a piece (and I’ve received plenty of comments and compliments on the Oura) your response is more one of casual surprise as opposed to eye-rolling expectation. So, yes, size matters when it comes to an Oura ring, and in our view, the smaller and lighter the ring, the better.
Here are five more great things about the new Oura Ring 5.
01. It’s not only smaller but much more comfortable
This is probably the most immediately obvious upgrade. Oura reports that the Ring 5 has 40% less volume than the Ring 4, measuring 6.09mm wide and 2.28mm thick versus 7.9mm and about 2.88mm. The redesigned, flatter sensor arrangement also makes the inside feel less intrusive. Basically, it feels less like wearing a piece of technology and more like wearing an actual ring.
02. The sensors are smarter, improving accuracy
This is the big one, technically. Oura has redesigned the optical sensing system, with shorter light paths, more efficient LEDs and improved sensor positioning. There’s better accuracy in overnight heart rate variability, by 12%, and closer to 20% improvement in accuracy of heart rate during activities such as walking, running and cycling, compared with the Oura 4.03. Battery life is longer
Your Oura ring comes with a small but speedy battery charger, and most users find a full charge to last about a full week.
Energy gets a good bump up in the Oura Ring 5. In fact, one full charge sees the ring reading your stats for a solid week, sometimes even up to 9 days depending on your levels of activity and its analysing of these, whereas I found the Ring 4 often only lasted for a week. We realise that longer batter life is not surprising in progressing models of technology, but with a wearable bit of smart tech like this – whose whole purpose is continuous monitoring, particularly overnight – that extra day or two can make all the difference. You spend less time thinking about charging it and more time actually wearing it. That said, it charges fairly quickly.
04. It’s lighter and less visually ‘techy’
The combination of the slimmer profile, lower weight and redesigned sensors makes Ring 5 considerably more discreet. And of course it’s available in several finishes, including a new Deep Rose. Oura has really pushed the jewellery rather than gadget aesthetic this time. The lightness of the ring means it is unobtrusive, hence you’re much more likely to leave it on 24/7 and that of course means better data.
05. The health insights are becoming more proactive
This is slightly different from the hardware improvements. Ring 5 launches alongside newer software experiences including ‘Health Radar’, which is designed to flag potential changes in areas such as cardiovascular and respiratory health. There are also new health-oriented insights – mostly to assist users taking diabetic/weight loss medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy – and some new AI-enabled medical guidance. For those who have invested in an Oura Ring 4, don’t panic as Oura says many of these new software experiences are also coming to Gen 3 and the Ring 4, so everybody’s happy.So, with its better sensing, smaller design and more comfortable fit, plus a better battery life, this ring is definitely having more outings alongside the Cartier. Now, I know I did say I don’t wear jewellery often but I’m getting used to both rings being worn now.
The Ōura Ring 5 is available in a variety of colours and textures. To view these, and for pricing, visit ouraring.com.
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Pure Elements: haircare products that are pure in name and nature
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #foundObjects01BlockAd #highTech #oura5Ring #ouraRing #ouraRing5 #REVIEWS #tech #technology #Ōura -
The new Oura 5 Ring is so light and unobtrusive you forget you’re wearing it: Here are 5 more positive things about this handsome smart ring
As someone who doesn’t wear a watch, nor jewellery too often, I’m so glad I’ve been introduced to the Oura Ring 5. The new model ring is not only smaller, but boasts some bonus functions and extra specs that were missing in the Oura 4.
For anyone not familiar with this stat-reading product, the Oura can best be described as an attractive, traditional-looking ring that tracks the user’s sleep, activity, stress levels, temperature, and general health monitoring.
The new petite size of the Oura Ring 5 is probably it’s greatest selling point, and here at Cream, we believe the best technology is increasingly that which we forget we’re wearing. Even in an accessory sense, you don’t want to be too conscious of the jewellery you’re wearing. That way, when someone comments on a piece (and I’ve received plenty of comments and compliments on the Oura) your response is more one of casual surprise as opposed to eye-rolling expectation. So, yes, size matters when it comes to an Oura ring, and in our view, the smaller and lighter the ring, the better.
Here are five more great things about the new Oura Ring 5.
01. It’s not only smaller but much more comfortable
This is probably the most immediately obvious upgrade. Oura reports that the Ring 5 has 40% less volume than the Ring 4, measuring 6.09mm wide and 2.28mm thick versus 7.9mm and about 2.88mm. The redesigned, flatter sensor arrangement also makes the inside feel less intrusive. Basically, it feels less like wearing a piece of technology and more like wearing an actual ring.
02. The sensors are smarter, improving accuracy
This is the big one, technically. Oura has redesigned the optical sensing system, with shorter light paths, more efficient LEDs and improved sensor positioning. There’s better accuracy in overnight heart rate variability, by 12%, and closer to 20% improvement in accuracy of heart rate during activities such as walking, running and cycling, compared with the Oura 4.03. Battery life is longer
Your Oura ring comes with a small but speedy battery charger, and most users find a full charge to last about a full week.
Energy gets a good bump up in the Oura Ring 5. In fact, one full charge sees the ring reading your stats for a solid week, sometimes even up to 9 days depending on your levels of activity and its analysing of these, whereas I found the Ring 4 often only lasted for a week. We realise that longer batter life is not surprising in progressing models of technology, but with a wearable bit of smart tech like this – whose whole purpose is continuous monitoring, particularly overnight – that extra day or two can make all the difference. You spend less time thinking about charging it and more time actually wearing it. That said, it charges fairly quickly.
04. It’s lighter and less visually ‘techy’
The combination of the slimmer profile, lower weight and redesigned sensors makes Ring 5 considerably more discreet. And of course it’s available in several finishes, including a new Deep Rose. Oura has really pushed the jewellery rather than gadget aesthetic this time. The lightness of the ring means it is unobtrusive, hence you’re much more likely to leave it on 24/7 and that of course means better data.
05. The health insights are becoming more proactive
This is slightly different from the hardware improvements. Ring 5 launches alongside newer software experiences including ‘Health Radar’, which is designed to flag potential changes in areas such as cardiovascular and respiratory health. There are also new health-oriented insights – mostly to assist users taking diabetic/weight loss medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy – and some new AI-enabled medical guidance. For those who have invested in an Oura Ring 4, don’t panic as Oura says many of these new software experiences are also coming to Gen 3 and the Ring 4, so everybody’s happy.So, with its better sensing, smaller design and more comfortable fit, plus a better battery life, this ring is definitely having more outings alongside the Cartier. Now, I know I did say I don’t wear jewellery often but I’m getting used to both rings being worn now.
The Ōura Ring 5 is available in a variety of colours and textures. To view these, and for pricing, visit ouraring.com.
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Pure Elements: haircare products that are pure in name and nature
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #foundObjects01BlockAd #highTech #oura5Ring #ouraRing #ouraRing5 #REVIEWS #tech #technology #Ōura -
The new Oura 5 Ring is so light and unobtrusive you forget you’re wearing it: Here are 5 more positive things about this handsome smart ring
As someone who doesn’t wear a watch, nor jewellery too often, I’m so glad I’ve been introduced to the Oura Ring 5. The new model ring is not only smaller, but boasts some bonus functions and extra specs that were missing in the Oura 4.
For anyone not familiar with this stat-reading product, the Oura can best be described as an attractive, traditional-looking ring that tracks the user’s sleep, activity, stress levels, temperature, and general health monitoring.
The new petite size of the Oura Ring 5 is probably it’s greatest selling point, and here at Cream, we believe the best technology is increasingly that which we forget we’re wearing. Even in an accessory sense, you don’t want to be too conscious of the jewellery you’re wearing. That way, when someone comments on a piece (and I’ve received plenty of comments and compliments on the Oura) your response is more one of casual surprise as opposed to eye-rolling expectation. So, yes, size matters when it comes to an Oura ring, and in our view, the smaller and lighter the ring, the better.
Here are five more great things about the new Oura Ring 5.
01. It’s not only smaller but much more comfortable
This is probably the most immediately obvious upgrade. Oura reports that the Ring 5 has 40% less volume than the Ring 4, measuring 6.09mm wide and 2.28mm thick versus 7.9mm and about 2.88mm. The redesigned, flatter sensor arrangement also makes the inside feel less intrusive. Basically, it feels less like wearing a piece of technology and more like wearing an actual ring.
02. The sensors are smarter, improving accuracy
This is the big one, technically. Oura has redesigned the optical sensing system, with shorter light paths, more efficient LEDs and improved sensor positioning. There’s better accuracy in overnight heart rate variability, by 12%, and closer to 20% improvement in accuracy of heart rate during activities such as walking, running and cycling, compared with the Oura 4.03. Battery life is longer
Your Oura ring comes with a small but speedy battery charger, and most users find a full charge to last about a full week.
Energy gets a good bump up in the Oura Ring 5. In fact, one full charge sees the ring reading your stats for a solid week, sometimes even up to 9 days depending on your levels of activity and its analysing of these, whereas I found the Ring 4 often only lasted for a week. We realise that longer batter life is not surprising in progressing models of technology, but with a wearable bit of smart tech like this – whose whole purpose is continuous monitoring, particularly overnight – that extra day or two can make all the difference. You spend less time thinking about charging it and more time actually wearing it. That said, it charges fairly quickly.
04. It’s lighter and less visually ‘techy’
The combination of the slimmer profile, lower weight and redesigned sensors makes Ring 5 considerably more discreet. And of course it’s available in several finishes, including a new Deep Rose. Oura has really pushed the jewellery rather than gadget aesthetic this time. The lightness of the ring means it is unobtrusive, hence you’re much more likely to leave it on 24/7 and that of course means better data.
05. The health insights are becoming more proactive
This is slightly different from the hardware improvements. Ring 5 launches alongside newer software experiences including ‘Health Radar’, which is designed to flag potential changes in areas such as cardiovascular and respiratory health. There are also new health-oriented insights – mostly to assist users taking diabetic/weight loss medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy – and some new AI-enabled medical guidance. For those who have invested in an Oura Ring 4, don’t panic as Oura says many of these new software experiences are also coming to Gen 3 and the Ring 4, so everybody’s happy.So, with its better sensing, smaller design and more comfortable fit, plus a better battery life, this ring is definitely having more outings alongside the Cartier. Now, I know I did say I don’t wear jewellery often but I’m getting used to both rings being worn now.
The Ōura Ring 5 is available in a variety of colours and textures. To view these, and for pricing, visit ouraring.com.
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Damon Deteso: Insights on the Discovery of the Planetary-Mass Companion GJ 504b, the “Pink Planet”
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Pure Elements: haircare products that are pure in name and nature
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #antoninoTatiCreamMagazine #foundObjects01BlockAd #highTech #oura5Ring #ouraRing #ouraRing5 #REVIEWS #tech #technology #Ōura -
Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of that was the result of said decadent era), but at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming; I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Brett. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
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Rate this:
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of that was the result of said decadent era), but at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming; I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Brett. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
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Rate this:
#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #lessThanZero #literature #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of that was the result of said decadent era), but at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming; I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Brett. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
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Rate this:
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Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of that was the result of said decadent era), but at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming; I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Brett. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
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Rate this:
#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #lessThanZero #literature #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
Bret Easton Ellis – author of ‘The Shards’ and co-executive producer of the new FX series – says he’s sad for Millennials: “Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation”
Bret Easton Ellis gets into much strife over the things he says. Usually the critics are a third his age (he’s 59 at the time of our chat, 62 today). Those critics are mainly speedy thumb-texters or Goggle Box-like couch analysts, who either have no idea what life was like before the internet, or don’t know how to use it properly now. What some critics fail to realise is that Ellis’ works are like diaries about the opulent 1980s – a time when things were less doom and gloom (admittedly, much of that was the result of said decadent era), but at least when vibes were more optimistic and aspirational. And perhaps, yes, sadly, ultra-competitive on the social circuit.
In retrospect, and in light of today’s woke values, Ellis’s fictional (and some part-factual) tales about excessive drug-taking, hard partying, serial killing and rampant infidelity would appear more nihilistic than the orgies and battlegrounds of ancient Rome, and he is often taken to task for taking the decadence thing too far. Heck, it’s mostly fiction, kids! And again, mostly retrospecitve.
In his recent book ‘The Shards’, Ellis continues his relaying of life in the fast lane, packing its pages with sketchy sex and unhealthy one-upmanship, material obsession and murderous rage, but there’s a catch: part of it is real.
Acting as a kind of ‘prequel’ to his first novel Less Than Zero (1985), The Shards [was] Ellis’s first novel in 13 years. While his book White of 2019 was part memoir / part podcast-put-to-paper, The Shards is what you might call autofiction (a cross between autobiography and make-believe). The story is set in his final year of high school. A murderer is wreaking havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1981, to a soundtrack of Scary Monsters and Hungry Like The Wolf. Opulence and high self-opinion were big in the early ’80s. It was a time when woke was just something you did with a hangover…
Now, as if by wish of mine come true, there is a TV series based on The Shards, just released on FX – the drugs-and-knives-connotating title intact, created by none other than my all-time favourite horror/thriller telly auteur, Ryan Murphy.
Now, while I’ve read the book, I’ve not seen The Shards yet – because the amount of entertainment online these days is overwhelming; I’m a busy bloke unless you invite me to the party; and television PR is not what it used to be. Heck, I wish I’d gotten sent every Ryan Murphy production to preview even as it was being dropped to all – I would put all other entertainment and lifestyle features on hold to go and get all thesis-paper on it. Too late now. Everybody else has seen it. Late to the game. Just kidding, the delay in watching it has only got me more excited in anticipation to see it. And that soundtrack better be killer, gentlemen.
I did, however, manage to have a nice long chat with Bret Easton Ellis a couple of years back about that very book, and it’s an interview well worth dusting the cobwebs off of, and presenting to you now, dear reader.
Ellis, who not only lent the rights for the novel to be turned into a series by Murphy but came on board as executive producer and co-writer. Even the main character’s name is Bret Ellis, so we can only guess that we’ll be getting all the sex, all the drugs, all the decadence, and all the horror – straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
Such as you get here.
Interview by Antonino Tati
Hi Brett. What did you think of the immediate negative press you received for your previous book [to ‘The Shards’] ‘White’?
I think it was absurd. I think the mainstream media’s response to the book is Exhibit A in what I talk about in the very last chapter. This hysteric overreach that anyone who has an opinion that is different than theirs – than the bubble they reside in… I think White is actually a very chill book, tonally. I don’t think it’s hysterical and I don’t think I use any exclamation marks.
I don’t think my book is attacking anyone. I think what the book is calling for is a kind of calm, let’s-take-a-deep-breath, neutral attitude towards what’s happening and have a conversation. The idea that I am attacking Millennials when I’m actually quite sympathetic to them is part of the problem.
Aren’t you doing them a service by getting them to wake up and say something, rather than just Like something?
I live with a Millennial and I know that this is one of the great stressors: of being liked… His online presence and the crippling shame that occurs if you are attacked online; or if something of yours doesn’t get a lot of followers or a lot of likes. It seems to me to be a terrible way to live. I don’t know, where is this going to go?
The thing is, Bret, when we went to primary school, we were given happy stamps and stars for good work, right? But we didn’t expect to receive these in our adult life. Why is it that the new generation isn’t equipped with the armor to cope with critique?
My theory is that maybe many of these people felt they didn’t get enough attention or enough love from their mothers and fathers, who were narcissistic and wrapped up in their own lives. I certainly can say that this is true of me and many people I know of my generation. So I think Gen-X-ers overcompensated.
“I’ve talked to parents my age and they have wrung their hands and said, ‘I’ve overcompensated – I did not want my children to go through the childhood I had, and I wanted to give them everything I was lacking.’ They have ultimately said, ‘I think I’ve coddled them into helplessness.”
I talked to a parent who said, “I arrange ‘free range’ time for my child now” – who is actually a teenager. “I will actually not follow them or track them on the phone – and they can do that one day a week, like going to the mall or to a movie, or whatever.” We looked at each other and burst out laughing. Free range time? That’s all I had! I barely saw my parents. I was completely on my own, and by being completely on my own I fostered a kind of independence and it aided me to becoming an adult. Some of these parents have done the opposite to the next generation and they become so worried about them that they’ve over-medicated them, they gave in to their every whim, and also you have social media guiding them into a self-made bubble where they’ve built a world that they feel good about. Actually they’ve built a safe space for themselves. But once they go out of that safe space they encounter the often-unpleasant difficult realities of life, and you break down.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/bret-easton-ellis-radio-edit-what-do-you-think-.-breakdown.wavAbove: audio of Bret Easton Ellis discussing helicopter parenting and the perils of social media.
Ellis in his 1982 yearbook.
We’ll talk more about the perils of social media in a moment, but I want to go back to where you were given the freedom and an environment of ‘non-paranoia’ while growing up. We have helicopter parenting today and some parents are over-zealous in their protection of their children. Has this worry rubbed off on the next generation?
That could be well and true. I know that definitely is a narrative in my partner’s story; that was his mother what you just described. What was supposed to be something that was supposed to aid in a child’s comfort actually added to a child’s sense of stress and paranoia.
And sense of victimisation. Likes online often coincide with incidents where an individual has worn their heart on their sleeve or shown a weakness and I suppose that kind of feeds into the idea that playing victim is a likeable thing.
It does.
As opposed to when you and I were growing up, just pushing through or being the hero was what was admired. Now it seems we’re celebrated every time we show we’re weak…
That’s true. I do see that my partner is much, much more interested in people who have become victims, or who have victimised themselves; or who have terrible ailments; or who are transgender; people who are going through immense physical and emotional difficulties, rather than someone who wins an award, or someone who’s an individual. That’s what really bothers me, is this notion that the individual doesn’t matter but the group does.
“It’s an argument that my partner and I get into a lot. I grew up admiring individuals doing something amazing or creative. He cares more about the group and what the group thinks. What does the group think about this video? Or this video game? Or this victim movement?”
It’s like the ’90s meme ‘Kill your idols’ is suddenly going viral.
Yes, but around the world, people still do like soccer stars, people do respond to huge pop stars. But one-on-one, when I talk to my boyfriend or his friends, they identify with people who are injured in some way more than people who aren’t.
Is there a certain Us-versus-Them at play? When a person is liking someone’s victim situation, aren’t they kind of saying ‘there’s someone weaker than me, hence I like it’?
Yes, of course, that plays into it as well.
Isn’t that less celebratory and more sadistic and sinister?
Well I’ve never met a more passive-aggressive generation than Millennials. There’s a passive-aggressiveness there, and I think you’ve just located it. There is a very ‘Oh, I’m just a likeable victim’ mentality going on but ‘I’m very positive and I really want the best for everybody’ – but the slightest questioning of that, the slightest hint of the reality that comes in, I have never seen a group turn on you with a snarl and a snap so goddamn quickly it’ll make your head spin.
It’s like an episode of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ but real life, really.
Yes, and not with drag queens, sadly. That is a very strange dichotomy; between that upbeat positivity and this almost whiplash anger at almost anything that intrudes upon it.
Instead of the proverbial silver soon, would you say Millennials were born with a silver smartphone in their mouth?
Completely I would. Obviously there’s pain there; this is not the happy generation.
“There’s a lot of stress; a lot of anxiety about being likeable; about dealing with technology; about being distracted by technology; and I think there’s a real lack of pleasure in the amount of information they’re privy to. You’ve got so much of everything that nothing really matters in the end.”
I saw a headline some time ago that read: Bret Easton Ellis Takes On Generation Wuss…
That happened years ago on my Twitter feed where I began to notice things about my partner and his friends that were so shockingly weak. Little things that they couldn’t do or were confused by. So I decided to put some of that stuff in my book [White] and I really did not think it was going to be circled so heavily and dissected by Millennial writers – I mean the angriest, longest reviews have been from Millennials. The reviewers were, like, “The old and irrelevant white writer Bret Easton Ellis”. That is Millennial in a nutshell; Exhibit B of what I’m talking about: this over-reaching hysteria about anything that comes close to investigating the world with a critical eye. It’s depressing in a way, but I never meant to poke a stick at Millennials.“Millennials weren’t created in a vacuum; they were a reaction to many of the values of my generation and Gen X. Of course they were tired of our nihilism, our negativity, our coolness, our irony. Maybe it’s normal to react against that with an aspirational viewpoint, but it’s disturbing to hear them say “Why would I want to see that movie when it’s so negative?”
What do you think are the nihilistic aspects of today’s generation? What about your Kim Kardashian followers and people that are infatuated with Instagram; two examples less about victimisation and more about selfness.
And fakeness. You’re putting out a fake version of your life; you’re becoming an actor. I know quite a few people who are not having a great time right now – they’re kind of depressed, having problems with their relationships, have addictive issues, or are unemployed… and then I see their Instagram feeds and everything’s awesome; they’re smiling under palm trees, or holding their little baby with their husband – even though I know they’re getting a divorce in eight months. There is something nihilistic about that, compared to my generation which just said, “It’s all fucked”.
You just need to look at the popular drugs during any given generation to see that they reflect the overall attitude. Look at cocaine and how it tied into decadence and greed. Today there’s crystal meth, ketamine – harsher drugs than they were taking in the ’80s.
They’re taking cheap drugs. They’re not taking, dare I say it, the better cocaine that was available to all of us in the 1980s [For the record I only tried it first time in the early ’90s and have only done it two or three times since, AT]. Drugs are so bad now and everything is so cheap. Of course everyone is smoking or snorting crystal meth; it’s relatively inexpensive. Or they’re taking organic drugs, like Kratom, which is sweeping across America [and which works like morphine]. A lot of this is about the economic disadvantages this generation has, and that limits their choices, especially in terms of lifestyle.
Despite financial limitations, they’re not limited elsewhere – I mean they’ve got the internet whereas Gen X never had the internet through their teens, twenties and thirties. Aren’t they over-supplied with choice?
But they have no money. And I’m sympathetic to that. In fact, I’ve been far harsher with my generation in my fiction than I have been with any other generation. I’ve taken my generation to task in Less Than Zero, and American Psycho [and in The Shards]. I’ve really criticised their shallowness and fecklessness, and their posing and materialism.
If someone in their twenties would read three of your earlier books, say ‘Less Than Zero’, ‘Rules of Attraction’ and even ‘Glamorama’, do you think they’d have less of an antagonistic attitude toward you?
Completely, because that’s what reading fiction does; it makes you more empathic; it puts you in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s Oliver Twist’s, Lily Bart’s, or Patrick Bateman’s. I think that sustained concentration on these pages and on these characters who are so different to you, that’s why fiction always thrilled me; to take you into these different worlds. I’m not sure if it fully works that way anymore in this hectic, busy world. And I don’t think video games today work like fiction novels: they last for 36 hours and you’re in control of the narrative. Sometimes I do feel very old-mannish about the novel. You know, “The novel is the greatest medium!” Many people don’t think this anymore. I think I was just raised in the right time.
Thinking about all your years of writing, would you say honesty is the best policy when putting pen to paper?
That’s what I’ve always done since Less Than Zero, and I think that’s what an artist does. I think any writer should be doing that and I pity the writer who does the opposite.
Bret Easton Ellis’ novel ‘The Shards’ is out through Swift Press / Allen and Unwin, RRP $32.99.
‘The Shards’ airs on FX. I’ve bookmarked it myself.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/master_george-sex-the-absolute-master-august-1.wav
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#americanPsycho #andrewHornery #ANTONINOTATI #authorInterviews #bretEastonEllis #bretEastonEllisInterview #bretEastonEllisWhite #conversationsWithCultureIcons #CREAMMAGAZINE #lessThanZero #literature #modernLiterature #POPCULTURE #rosReines #rupaul #rupaulSDragRace #ryanMurphy #theShards #theShardsSoundtrack #theShardsTv #theShardsTvSeries #thereSYourQuoteMate2 #whiteTheBook -
The Review of a Film Few Will Recall the Name of, but boy, what a film! ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ film review
A foot-stomping introduction sets the rhythm for The Rivals of Amziah King, a beautifully crafted Southern tale of community, loyalty, crime… and honey, all with Matthew McConaughey at its folksy, charismatic centre.
As night falls over a small Oklahoma town, Amziah King (McConaughey) pulls his pickup truck into the local burger joint, where friends gather with guitars, fiddle, banjo and drums for an impromptu acoustic jam sesh. Even the local cops can’t resist rocking up for a bit of toe-tapping. The music isn’t merely background noise; it establishes the film’s pulse. If Mumford & Sons is your thing, prepare for some enjoyment here.
The plot wastes little time getting underway, opening with a honey heist that introduces an intriguing mixture of drama, mystery and crime. From there, we’re taken on a winding journey through the Oklahoma countryside, where bees and their honey become a metaphor for the community itself: everyone has a role, everyone is connected, and disturb the hive at your peril.
Our protagonist’s world is further complicated when he is reunited with a former foster child, Kateri, played by Native American actor Angelina LookingGlass, whom Amziah and his late wife once cared for. Their chance reunion eventually draws her back into the honey business — and, perhaps more importantly, gives her a sense of having found home again.
The film gradually reveals its characters and the complicated relationships that bind this community together. One of its most delightful sequences is a pot-luck dinner in the local community hall, where personalities emerge through shared stories, good food and plenty of laughter. McConaughey’s Amziah is the kind of character you could happily listen to spinning yarns all afternoon.
There is plenty of humour, too. A school lockdown caused by a swarm of bees is initially absurdly funny, until the situation reminds us how quickly things can turn dangerous.
Then there’s the town’s kingpin, played with cheek by Kurt Russell. Like the queen bee at the centre of a hive, his influence is everywhere — but underneath the surface lies exploitation, violence and a darker side to the community.
Director Andrew Patterson brings an almost hypnotic beauty to the Oklahoma landscape, with the cinematography here capturing both the majesty of nature and the intricate world of the bees – some of the most underrated species in all of biological study. There are echoes of the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a touch of Quentin Tarantino’s darkly comic violence, and even some Guy Ritchie-style camera flourishes and freeze frames.
Some may argue that The Rivals of Amziah King could have been shorter. One fellow moviegoer even suggested cutting some of the music.
Hell no.
The music, characters, community and enormous heart are precisely what make this film work. Like a good hive, everything is connected — and it’s best experienced by settling in and letting the whole thing buzz around you.
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#AngelinaLookingGlass #ANTONINOTATI #cinema #CoenBrothers #CREAMMAGAZINE #elleGetty #FILM #filmPreviews #filmReviews #goodFilms2026 #GuyRitchie #KurtRussell #POPCULTURE #quentinTarantino #TheRivalsOfAmziahKing -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
That Madonna and Kylie collab is out and it’s pretty fab, but wait, did Madonna just throw shade at Pepsi at the end of the video?
Loving the new Madonna X Kylie collab, Love Sensation. I’m happy it came out sooner than some time in the near future. They say tomorrow is now really in this hyper-real world. And something had to come from all that talk about a duet between two of the world’s greatest pop sensations. And I will call it a duet because duets don’t have to be mushy and slow and this track is less of a collab and more of an event. It had to come out now. After all, hype is futile without followup, and in today’s InstaWorld that means it ought to have been out yesterday. For devotees in the LGBTQIA communities, the song ought to feel instantly likeable, perhaps even a little familiar – hope and devotion can do those things to your mind. Before you know it, you’d imagine the song was pretty much written for you. And that intent, the natural chemistry, the familial connections, the doing away with too much trickery, that better clarity in vocals, the chiller beats per minute, and that universal message connects instantly with the audience it’s intended to gift. The others will catch on by summer’s peak.
I don’t mind the video. A bit slapped-together-at-an-Amsterdam-promo-gig and with words all over the place having the nerve to think they’re in a lyric video – but, hey, if hideous fonts helps brat artists go viral, hopefully a few lovelier fonted words like these will help teach the folks how pretty language used to before it went #awol and before we let the machines do all the talking.
But something stuck with me after I watched the clip. Not just the naughty earworm that crawled out of the catchy-as-heck song. Not the flashing graphics that for all I know might have read, “You must love Madonna and Kylie or you will perish in hell” (for all I know). And not just the joy of finally seeing two brilliant pop artists coming together to bring their learn-ed all to the contemporary pop scene. It was a little joke Madonna makes at the end when she orders “Coke and ice” on her cellphone.
Now it’s not the statement I’m really questioning here: a classic Coke/coke joke is a classic joke. My pondering was more along the lines of why the statement at all? Call it overanalysing but when it comes to music icons, well, that’s kind of what I do.
So I started asking myself… Was it to sound cool with the kids? Was it possible shade at Pepsi for some odd royalty dispute from yore? Was it payola from a competitive big beverage brand? Was it street-talk hinting that a mix of cocaine and meth might just be where enlightenment’s at? (not tried that combination and probably won’t ever). Was it a woman not having to mind her Ps and Qs (because in a free-speech democracy we shouldn’t have to hold our tongue) and just letting some silly quip slip through her lips in place of silence? As a Leo, I know it’s really difficult to keep your mouth shut, especially when everything that comes out of it is golden. See what I did there?
Anyhoo, the cocaine-was-once-an-ingredient-in-Coke jokes probably began some time in 1930 – a few months after the beverage became completely-cocaine free in 1929 (I’m guessing it took a few years for everybody to get over the Charlie hangover). Like all good jokes, it has longevity and, quite frankly, I think it has purpose. If there’s good reason for the joke’s survival and random injection into the popular vernacular, I’d like to think that it was that any soft drink, with or without the excess sugar, is probably a better stimulant to help you reach a certain (even small) level of conscience or higher consciousness (seriously, because there really is nothing that you can’t do) than, say, coke, ice or a combination of the two.
I’m leaning more towards that than any idea that it fell under a Scattergories list of Stupid Cool-Kid Words, or Jokes To Help Break Those Seconds Of Awkward Silence, and I certainly hope they weren’t three words scribbled on paper and handed over from a PR rep who probably likes her real coke too much.
I’m not sure why I really tried to analyse that one. Just something about it stuck. Like so many of the things Madonna has said since blessing us with her ultra-presence all those decades ago. But I do kind of feel Someone needs to sit this woman down and give her a dose of her own Leo medicine. Or a nice cup of herbal tea and a chat. Or a Tequila cocktail or Coke with ice, even. The point is guaranteed positive public relations is now out of everybody’s hands. Well, kind of in everybody’s hands. Actually, I’m not sure anymore because AI has a pretty big mouth, too. Iconic one-liners might just be bandied about the wrong way if an artist’s delivery is too ambiguous.
What one needs is a good guide or mantra to help practice the marrying of the natural with intention with any desired material result – in this particular case, stream this song, or love me when I’m gone from your phone screen. [He wrote after seeing the video an hour ago and is still thinking and writing about it.]
Point being: genuine intention is good. When that’s in place, everything else follows effortlessly.
Kylie to reissue excellent album ‘X’ for the first time on vinyl, other LPs to follow suit, and yay
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
How to Shop for Cannabis Responsibly in New York City in 2026
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #cocaCola #coke #ConfessionsII #confessionsOnADanceFloor #CREAMMAGAZINE #kylie #kylieMinogue #kylieNewMusic2026 #loveSensation #madonna #madonnaKylieCollab #madonnaKylieDuet #madonnaNewMusic2026 #MUSIC #newYork #newYorkCity #pepsi #pepsiCola #POPCULTURE #popCultureCommentary #popMusic #theColaWars -
George Michael – I Want Your Sex (And I End Up With A Wet Dream) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the camp documentaries, mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Every track is an awesome head trip. Great to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
For the George Michael track, below, The Freemasons have provided a pounding (whoops!) club backbeat while weaved over the top are excerpts from a sex education video of the 1950s. It’s cheeky, it’s fun, and the mix brings George’s classic to a whole new level. Listen out for the brilliant drop a third of the way through.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/07.-master_side-b-03-george-final-master.wavGeorge Michael I Want Your Sex (And I End Up With A Wet Dream)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and feel free to tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #britpop #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo: where two Aussie icons blend beautifully
When I was a kid in the 1970s, my sisters and I would wait for the weekly drop of wonderful ice creams, courtesy of our Uncle Carlo who used to work as a floor manager with Peter’s Ice Cream. Uncle Carlo would have dibs on the ice creams that came off the factory line but weren’t quite right for the shops – rejects if you like. Drumsticks , Freddos with bung eyes, Fudge Bars with too much chocolate leaked onto the pop stick, even Twin Poles where excess red had leaked into the yellow bit. To Peter’s management these were flaws. To us it was Ice Cream Heaven.
If Uncle Carlo were around today and still working at Peter’s, and if the Food Standard Codes weren’t as impossibly stringent as they are in 2026 (which I suppose is a good thing), he would have needed a truck to deliver the volume and variety of ice creams that customers are spoilt with today. Drumstick alone has no less than 10 varieties on shelves at any given time, from original to all manner of flavoured minis to even plant-based/vegan options. As for Peter’s Ice Cream collaboration with other brands, well, since the company is co-owned by Nestlé now, the collabs are gladly arriving thick and fast.
Just released from Peters this month are new Drumstick Minis Milo which are big on texture – packed with that familiar Milo flavour and tasty choc pieces throughout. All in a crispy wafer cone, of course, with a yummy choccy tip. Is it me, or has the choccy tip on Drumsticks gotten bigger – which I love, of course.
The collision of two Aussie icons delivers exactly what you expect: creamy, malted Milo in ice cream tucked into a crisp mini cone, capped with chocolate and scattered choc flakes for good, textural punch.
Flavour-wise, the Milo comes through gently rather than boldly, which may divide purists, but it keeps things nice if you’re enjoying your ice cream with a coffee or some other beverage accompaniment. You don’t want too much competition on the taste buds.
As a freezer staple, these minis are fun, fuss-free, and built for repeat grabs. Now… a six-pack in the freezer may not be as abundant as when Uncle Carlo would deliver boxes of Drumsticks to us, but the important thing is to keep a few in the freezer for whenever that sense of nostalgia, taste, and desire for good homegrown products hits.
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo are available in 6-pack from good supermarkets including Woolworths, RRP $9.90.Allen’s latest collab is almost addictive… these lollies should be illegal
An alternative spread that doesn’t sacrifice deliciousness for the sake of goodness
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #food #foodAndBeverage #foodReviews #miloDrumstick #peterSIceCream -
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo: where two Aussie icons blend beautifully
When I was a kid in the 1970s, my sisters and I would wait for the weekly drop of wonderful ice creams, courtesy of our Uncle Carlo who used to work as a floor manager with Peter’s Ice Cream. Uncle Carlo would have dibs on the ice creams that came off the factory line but weren’t quite right for the shops – rejects if you like. Drumsticks , Freddos with bung eyes, Fudge Bars with too much chocolate leaked onto the pop stick, even Twin Poles where excess red had leaked into the yellow bit. To Peter’s management these were flaws. To us it was Ice Cream Heaven.
If Uncle Carlo were around today and still working at Peter’s, and if the Food Standard Codes weren’t as impossibly stringent as they are in 2026 (which I suppose is a good thing), he would have needed a truck to deliver the volume and variety of ice creams that customers are spoilt with today. Drumstick alone has no less than 10 varieties on shelves at any given time, from original to all manner of flavoured minis to even plant-based/vegan options. As for Peter’s Ice Cream collaboration with other brands, well, since the company is co-owned by Nestlé now, the collabs are gladly arriving thick and fast.
Just released from Peters this month are new Drumstick Minis Milo which are big on texture – packed with that familiar Milo flavour and tasty choc pieces throughout. All in a crispy wafer cone, of course, with a yummy choccy tip. Is it me, or has the choccy tip on Drumsticks gotten bigger – which I love, of course.
The collision of two Aussie icons delivers exactly what you expect: creamy, malted Milo in ice cream tucked into a crisp mini cone, capped with chocolate and scattered choc flakes for good, textural punch.
Flavour-wise, the Milo comes through gently rather than boldly, which may divide purists, but it keeps things nice if you’re enjoying your ice cream with a coffee or some other beverage accompaniment. You don’t want too much competition on the taste buds.
As a freezer staple, these minis are fun, fuss-free, and built for repeat grabs. Now… a six-pack in the freezer may not be as abundant as when Uncle Carlo would deliver boxes of Drumsticks to us, but the important thing is to keep a few in the freezer for whenever that sense of nostalgia, taste, and desire for good homegrown products hits.
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo are available in 6-pack from good supermarkets including Woolworths, RRP $9.90.Allen’s latest collab is almost addictive… these lollies should be illegal
An alternative spread that doesn’t sacrifice deliciousness for the sake of goodness
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #food #foodAndBeverage #foodReviews #miloDrumstick #peterSIceCream -
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo: where two Aussie icons blend beautifully
When I was a kid in the 1970s, my sisters and I would wait for the weekly drop of wonderful ice creams, courtesy of our Uncle Carlo who used to work as a floor manager with Peter’s Ice Cream. Uncle Carlo would have dibs on the ice creams that came off the factory line but weren’t quite right for the shops – rejects if you like. Drumsticks , Freddos with bung eyes, Fudge Bars with too much chocolate leaked onto the pop stick, even Twin Poles where excess red had leaked into the yellow bit. To Peter’s management these were flaws. To us it was Ice Cream Heaven.
If Uncle Carlo were around today and still working at Peter’s, and if the Food Standard Codes weren’t as impossibly stringent as they are in 2026 (which I suppose is a good thing), he would have needed a truck to deliver the volume and variety of ice creams that customers are spoilt with today. Drumstick alone has no less than 10 varieties on shelves at any given time, from original to all manner of flavoured minis to even plant-based/vegan options. As for Peter’s Ice Cream collaboration with other brands, well, since the company is co-owned by Nestlé now, the collabs are gladly arriving thick and fast.
Just released from Peters this month are new Drumstick Minis Milo which are big on texture – packed with that familiar Milo flavour and tasty choc pieces throughout. All in a crispy wafer cone, of course, with a yummy choccy tip. Is it me, or has the choccy tip on Drumsticks gotten bigger – which I love, of course.
The collision of two Aussie icons delivers exactly what you expect: creamy, malted Milo in ice cream tucked into a crisp mini cone, capped with chocolate and scattered choc flakes for good, textural punch.
Flavour-wise, the Milo comes through gently rather than boldly, which may divide purists, but it keeps things nice if you’re enjoying your ice cream with a coffee or some other beverage accompaniment. You don’t want too much competition on the taste buds.
As a freezer staple, these minis are fun, fuss-free, and built for repeat grabs. Now… a six-pack in the freezer may not be as abundant as when Uncle Carlo would deliver boxes of Drumsticks to us, but the important thing is to keep a few in the freezer for whenever that sense of nostalgia, taste, and desire for good homegrown products hits.
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo are available in 6-pack from good supermarkets including Woolworths, RRP $9.90.Allen’s latest collab is almost addictive… these lollies should be illegal
An alternative spread that doesn’t sacrifice deliciousness for the sake of goodness
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #food #foodAndBeverage #foodReviews #miloDrumstick #peterSIceCream -
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo: where two Aussie icons blend beautifully
When I was a kid in the 1970s, my sisters and I would wait for the weekly drop of wonderful ice creams, courtesy of our Uncle Carlo who used to work as a floor manager with Peter’s Ice Cream. Uncle Carlo would have dibs on the ice creams that came off the factory line but weren’t quite right for the shops – rejects if you like. Drumsticks , Freddos with bung eyes, Fudge Bars with too much chocolate leaked onto the pop stick, even Twin Poles where excess red had leaked into the yellow bit. To Peter’s management these were flaws. To us it was Ice Cream Heaven.
If Uncle Carlo were around today and still working at Peter’s, and if the Food Standard Codes weren’t as impossibly stringent as they are in 2026 (which I suppose is a good thing), he would have needed a truck to deliver the volume and variety of ice creams that customers are spoilt with today. Drumstick alone has no less than 10 varieties on shelves at any given time, from original to all manner of flavoured minis to even plant-based/vegan options. As for Peter’s Ice Cream collaboration with other brands, well, since the company is co-owned by Nestlé now, the collabs are gladly arriving thick and fast.
Just released from Peters this month are new Drumstick Minis Milo which are big on texture – packed with that familiar Milo flavour and tasty choc pieces throughout. All in a crispy wafer cone, of course, with a yummy choccy tip. Is it me, or has the choccy tip on Drumsticks gotten bigger – which I love, of course.
The collision of two Aussie icons delivers exactly what you expect: creamy, malted Milo in ice cream tucked into a crisp mini cone, capped with chocolate and scattered choc flakes for good, textural punch.
Flavour-wise, the Milo comes through gently rather than boldly, which may divide purists, but it keeps things nice if you’re enjoying your ice cream with a coffee or some other beverage accompaniment. You don’t want too much competition on the taste buds.
As a freezer staple, these minis are fun, fuss-free, and built for repeat grabs. Now… a six-pack in the freezer may not be as abundant as when Uncle Carlo would deliver boxes of Drumsticks to us, but the important thing is to keep a few in the freezer for whenever that sense of nostalgia, taste, and desire for good homegrown products hits.
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo are available in 6-pack from good supermarkets including Woolworths, RRP $9.90.Allen’s latest collab is almost addictive… these lollies should be illegal
An alternative spread that doesn’t sacrifice deliciousness for the sake of goodness
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #food #foodAndBeverage #foodReviews #miloDrumstick #peterSIceCream -
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo: where two Aussie icons blend beautifully
When I was a kid in the 1970s, my sisters and I would wait for the weekly drop of wonderful ice creams, courtesy of our Uncle Carlo who used to work as a floor manager with Peter’s Ice Cream. Uncle Carlo would have dibs on the ice creams that came off the factory line but weren’t quite right for the shops – rejects if you like. Drumsticks , Freddos with bung eyes, Fudge Bars with too much chocolate leaked onto the pop stick, even Twin Poles where excess red had leaked into the yellow bit. To Peter’s management these were flaws. To us it was Ice Cream Heaven.
If Uncle Carlo were around today and still working at Peter’s, and if the Food Standard Codes weren’t as impossibly stringent as they are in 2026 (which I suppose is a good thing), he would have needed a truck to deliver the volume and variety of ice creams that customers are spoilt with today. Drumstick alone has no less than 10 varieties on shelves at any given time, from original to all manner of flavoured minis to even plant-based/vegan options. As for Peter’s Ice Cream collaboration with other brands, well, since the company is co-owned by Nestlé now, the collabs are gladly arriving thick and fast.
Just released from Peters this month are new Drumstick Minis Milo which are big on texture – packed with that familiar Milo flavour and tasty choc pieces throughout. All in a crispy wafer cone, of course, with a yummy choccy tip. Is it me, or has the choccy tip on Drumsticks gotten bigger – which I love, of course.
The collision of two Aussie icons delivers exactly what you expect: creamy, malted Milo in ice cream tucked into a crisp mini cone, capped with chocolate and scattered choc flakes for good, textural punch.
Flavour-wise, the Milo comes through gently rather than boldly, which may divide purists, but it keeps things nice if you’re enjoying your ice cream with a coffee or some other beverage accompaniment. You don’t want too much competition on the taste buds.
As a freezer staple, these minis are fun, fuss-free, and built for repeat grabs. Now… a six-pack in the freezer may not be as abundant as when Uncle Carlo would deliver boxes of Drumsticks to us, but the important thing is to keep a few in the freezer for whenever that sense of nostalgia, taste, and desire for good homegrown products hits.
Peters Drumstick Minis Milo are available in 6-pack from good supermarkets including Woolworths, RRP $9.90.Allen’s latest collab is almost addictive… these lollies should be illegal
An alternative spread that doesn’t sacrifice deliciousness for the sake of goodness
Hands in the air for a ‘Romy and Michele’ movie sequel is finally in production
Rate this:
#ANTONINOTATI #CREAMMAGAZINE #food #foodAndBeverage #foodReviews #miloDrumstick #peterSIceCream -
Pet Shop Boys – The Pop Kids (New York London Paris Muzik Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the camp documentaries, mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Great to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
In the Pet Shop Boys track The Pop Kids, you’ll hear a familiar sample – from M’s classic pop hit of 1979, Pop Muzik. See if this one doesn’t leave you with a catchy little earworm!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/08.-side-b-04-psb-final-master.wavPet Shop Boys The Pop Kids (New York London Paris Muzik Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and feel free to tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #britpop #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Pet Shop Boys – The Pop Kids (New York London Paris Muzik Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the camp documentaries, mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Great to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
In the Pet Shop Boys track The Pop Kids, you’ll hear a familiar sample – from M’s classic pop hit of 1979, Pop Muzik. See if this one doesn’t leave you with a catchy little earworm!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/08.-side-b-04-psb-final-master.wavPet Shop Boys The Pop Kids (New York London Paris Muzik Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and feel free to tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #britpop #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Suede – Savoir Faire (Suave Beats Remix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the camp documentaries, mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Great to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here are Britpop favourites, Suede, and their cunning track Savoir Faire, complete with lessons on how to undress in the boudoir. Like, seriously.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/04.-side-a-04-brett-final-master.wavSuede Savoir Faire (Suave Beats Remix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and feel free to tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #britpop #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Suede – Savoir Faire (Suave Beats Remix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the camp documentaries, mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Great to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here are Britpop favourites, Suede, and their cunning track Savoir Faire, complete with lessons on how to undress in the boudoir. Like, seriously.
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/04.-side-a-04-brett-final-master.wavSuede Savoir Faire (Suave Beats Remix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and feel free to tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #britpop #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Thomas Dolby – She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist! And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s a pop classic from the early ’80s, Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science, thrown onto the bunsen burner and coming out sounding hot.
Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #blindedByTheMagicOfScienceMix #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #sheBlindedMeWithScience #thomasDolby #volume1 -
Thomas Dolby – She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist! And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s a pop classic from the early ’80s, Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science, thrown onto the bunsen burner and coming out sounding hot.
Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #blindedByTheMagicOfScienceMix #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #sheBlindedMeWithScience #thomasDolby #volume1 -
Thomas Dolby – She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist! And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s a pop classic from the early ’80s, Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science, thrown onto the bunsen burner and coming out sounding hot.
Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #blindedByTheMagicOfScienceMix #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #sheBlindedMeWithScience #thomasDolby #volume1 -
Thomas Dolby – She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist! And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s a pop classic from the early ’80s, Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science, thrown onto the bunsen burner and coming out sounding hot.
Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #blindedByTheMagicOfScienceMix #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #sheBlindedMeWithScience #thomasDolby #volume1 -
Thomas Dolby – She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist! And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, EMF, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s a pop classic from the early ’80s, Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science, thrown onto the bunsen burner and coming out sounding hot.
Thomas Dolby She Blinded Me With Science (Blinded By The Magic Of Science Mix)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #blindedByTheMagicOfScienceMix #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #sheBlindedMeWithScience #thomasDolby #volume1 -
Madonna – Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s one of our favourites from Madonna, Candy Perfume Girl off of her Ray Of Light album, but remixed into a trance-like instruction manual on how to apply perfume. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s catchy. Full lyrics below, and remember, earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/02.-side-a-02-mad-final-master-1.wavMadonna Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #LessonsInFragranceApplication #madonna #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Madonna – Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s one of our favourites from Madonna, Candy Perfume Girl off of her Ray Of Light album, but remixed into a trance-like instruction manual on how to apply perfume. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s catchy. Full lyrics below, and remember, earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/02.-side-a-02-mad-final-master-1.wavMadonna Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #LessonsInFragranceApplication #madonna #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Madonna – Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s one of our favourites from Madonna, Candy Perfume Girl off of her Ray Of Light album, but remixed into a trance-like instruction manual on how to apply perfume. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s catchy. Full lyrics below, and remember, earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/02.-side-a-02-mad-final-master-1.wavMadonna Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #LessonsInFragranceApplication #madonna #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Madonna – Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s one of our favourites from Madonna, Candy Perfume Girl off of her Ray Of Light album, but remixed into a trance-like instruction manual on how to apply perfume. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s catchy. Full lyrics below, and remember, earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/02.-side-a-02-mad-final-master-1.wavMadonna Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #LessonsInFragranceApplication #madonna #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Madonna – Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here’s one of our favourites from Madonna, Candy Perfume Girl off of her Ray Of Light album, but remixed into a trance-like instruction manual on how to apply perfume. It’s camp, it’s kitsch, it’s catchy. Full lyrics below, and remember, earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/02.-side-a-02-mad-final-master-1.wavMadonna Candy Perfume Girl (Lessons In Fragrance Application)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #candyPerfumeGirl #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #LessonsInFragranceApplication #madonna #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Darren Hayes – A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here is the Cream Radio Blend of two great tracks by Darren Hayes, from his album ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made’, complete with underwater sounds to get you fully immersed. Earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/03.-side-a-03-darren-final-master.wav
Darren Hayes A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Darren Hayes – A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here is the Cream Radio Blend of two great tracks by Darren Hayes, from his album ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made’, complete with underwater sounds to get you fully immersed. Earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/03.-side-a-03-darren-final-master.wav
Darren Hayes A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Darren Hayes – A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here is the Cream Radio Blend of two great tracks by Darren Hayes, from his album ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made’, complete with underwater sounds to get you fully immersed. Earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/03.-side-a-03-darren-final-master.wav
Darren Hayes A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1 -
Darren Hayes – A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend) FREE DOWNLOAD
Found Objects is a music compilation series that celebrates the return of the remix and the art of sampling (as in found audio). Australian audio artist (and Cream magazine editor) Antonino Tati trawls the internet to discover the campest of documentaries, some mad retro advertisements, and cool-as film quotes, layering words of wit (and occasional dimwittedness) over alternative, preloved mixes of songs.
Each track is a pretty awesome head trip. Good to show off on the playlist. And the music featured is varied, with Volume 01 containing remixes of songs by Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Darren Hayes, Eurythmics, Suede, Thomas Dolby, George Michael, and Pet Shop Boys.
Here is the Cream Radio Blend of two great tracks by Darren Hayes, from his album ‘This Delicate Thing We’ve Made’, complete with underwater sounds to get you fully immersed. Earbuds in is always better!
https://creammagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/03.-side-a-03-darren-final-master.wav
Darren Hayes A Fear Of Falling Under / Who Would Have Thought (Cream Radio Blend)
Access your free downloads from the Found Objects: Volume 1 page, and tell your friends.
Rate this:
#alternativeMixes #ANTONINOTATI #clubDjs #clubMusic #danceMusic #edm #electronica #foundObjects #MUSIC #remixes #sampling #volume1