PJH Studios

Category: Pop Culture

Popular culture, culture that seems to spread beyond more than three people

  • Maycember

    May has always been a busy month, at least in American culture. It’s gotten to the point the hubbub of Spring, Mothers Day, graduation, sports, festival, et al now commands its own term–Maycember.

    Much like the month of December, my packed calendar at the end of the school year has left me feeling like there’s not so much joy, as obligation and overwhelm. Instead of cruising into summer with a sense of relief, I’m sweating my way to the finish line—and possibly crying and stress snacking at certain points, too.

    It’s hard to relish in the moments and milestones when your to-do list is longer than your kids’ Christmas lists. I’m always thinking about the next function I have to attend, or person to  remember to call, or thing to book, or buy.

  • A letter to RFK Jr

    Anais Godard wrote “An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Who Thinks My Daughter Is a Tragedy“. The whole thing is quotable, and its strength lies in its astute lyricism.

  • Jasmin Paris, first woman to complete The Barkley

    The Finisher is a 45 minute documentary of Jasmin Paris, first woman to complete The Barkley Marathon. It makes for a good sequel to the Barkley Marathon documentary.

  • Millennials became uncool?

    A tale old as time, a younger generation calling an older generation uncool. And now, Gen Z hath judged Millennials.

    In fact, much of the ire provoked by gen Z’s teasing is driven by a sense that the younger generation are merely jumping on a cool and trendy bandwagon built by millennials. “We paved the way for gen Z to be killing it on TikTok with our crappy Myspace accounts and MSN-ing each other from our university bedrooms,” says 41-year-old Lizzie Cernik, who believes millennials have a strong work ethic and are “tough cookies”

  • The Speed Project, a secret ultramarathon

    The Speed Project is a secret ultra-marathon, starting in Los Angeles and ending in Las Vegas.

    This, he explained, was a welcome to the Speed Project, a 340-mile relay race from Los Angeles to Las Vegas with no designated route, no specific rules and only one goal: to get there as fast as possible.

    Arend, the founder of the race, didn’t want video to leak out, because the underground lore was why most of the runners were here. Many of them considered the Speed Project a cult that gathered once a year; not only were there no rules, but there were no spectators and no prize money for the winners. There wasn’t even a website or an entry form. The only way in was through Arend’s WhatsApp.

    It’s like Cannonball Run in footrace form.

  • Import Immature

    Spencer Wright muses on how the world changes, there are things that never mature, namely, imports.

    I bring all of this up because the weird thing, and stick with me here, is that the world around us doesn’t mature. It keeps changing, even as we mostly stop doing so. The world doesn’t care that we’re not up for changing as much anymore, and actually maybe it seems to change more quickly the older we get, whether because culture actually accelerates over time or because of how we perceive the world as we age. Either way, to some extent each of us wakes up one day, and we’re forty-one, and we’ve shifted down like three gears. Life still feels crazy but we really have trimmed a lot of the extraneous stuff, we’re streamlined, we’ve chosen some kind of course, and maybe we’re even following it a bit. And for some reason, without really realizing it, we kind of expect the world to have chosen a course too. But the world, god bless it, is changing directions all the time, being immature as ever.

  • FAFAnomics

    Recent economic policy has turned into FAFAnomics – Fuck Around and Find Out Economics,

    F*ck Around and Find Out Economics, something that feels like the policy equivalent of a TikTok influencer doing increasingly dangerous stunts off the side of a building for views. The goal isn’t good governance; it’s capturing attention at any cost. And it’s working! While we debate whether each new crisis is legal, ethical, or even real1(as we should) the broader transformation of American fiscal policy continues.

  • Trading card game where local Japanese men are the stars

    The small town of Kawara in Fukuoka Prefecture created a Pokemon like card game featuring local middle-aged men as the stars.

    The creator of the game is Eri Miyahara, the Secretary General of the Saidosho Community Council. 

    “We wanted to strengthen the connection between the children and the older generations in the community. There are so many amazing people here. I thought it was such a shame that no one knew about them,” she said in an interview with Fuji News Network (FNN). “Since the card game went viral, so many kids are starting to look up to these men as heroic figures.” 

    The plan worked. Kids have started attending local events and volunteering for community activities — just for a chance to meet the ojisan from their cards. Participation in town events has reportedly doubled since the game launched. 

  • Man sinks in quicksand, rises with a girlfriend

    Any millennial will tell you, we thought quicksand was something we’d have to deal with given how all the cartoons warned us about it. We encountered metaphorical quicksand *gestures all around* instead. Well, for one man, he stepped in actual quicksand.

    The quicksand depicted in films, when a daring adventurer is suddenly ensnared in a life-threatening vortex of sand, is largely a myth. But that didn’t make it any less scary when Mitchell O’Brien slowly began to sink.

    Mr. O’Brien was on Van’s Beach on the northeastern shore of Lake Michigan with his friend Breanne Sika last weekend hunting for Leland bluestones, a byproduct of the iron ore furnaces that operated in the nearby fishing village that attract rock hunters.

    Some dredging had been taking place on the beach, and Mr. O’Brien, 37, from Traverse City, Mich., said he had thought the sand felt unstable.

    “‘That looks really dangerous,’” he recalled Ms. Sika saying. “I turned around and ended up walking right to the spot she said was dangerous.

  • Tool Libraries

    It’s good for everyone to own a basic set of tools: hammer, monkey wrench, phillips and flathead screwdriver. But not everyone is able to afford those, and most home projects require more. This is where a tool library, where you can check out tools like you can books, can come in handy.

    With the price of materials climbing (or set to), many DIY projects have become more difficult to finance overnight. But what if Curtin’s friend didn’t also have to purchase pricey tools to complete the project? What if he borrowed them all from neighbors instead, and returned them when he was finished? And what if those neighbors helped him through the project each step of the way?

    This is more or less how tool-lending libraries work.