That was fast

by Peter Rojas

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I'm already back from SXSW. Yesterday's panel went fairly well (I managed not to say anything too stupid, plus the other panelists were pretty damn sharp), and then I squeezed in a few panels and parties before I had to head back to NYC this afternoon. I won't go on and on about how all anyone talked about was Twitter, it seemed to be the only common topic of conversation in Austin and I'm sure it's getting blogged to death right now.

Jean Baudrillard

by Peter Rojas

Jean Baudrillard died yesterday. It'd take more than just a few sentences to even come close to summing up the complexity of his writing, but needless to say his work had a massive influence on me and his thinking figured heavily in both my undergraduate thesis (which was about Baudrillard, Debord, and the Situationist International) and my graduate dissertation (which was about Baudrillard, Derrida, Lyotard, and economics).

My brush with infamy

by Peter Rojas

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I have a confession to make: I starred in a play when I was in high school (Woody Allen's Play It Again Sam, if you must know). But that's not why I'm writing this post. The real reason is that my friend John Newman dug up our sophomore yearbook, which just happens to have a somewhat compromising picture of me on stage with co-star Ruby Rippey, aka the woman San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom had an affair with. Oddly enough this isn't the closest connection I have with a political scandal. When I was a kid I once had lunch with Gary Condit, who was our Assemblyman at the time. And yes, that's what I looked like in high school.