futurama (1964)

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-rama

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It is interesting to note the widespread use of a new derivative suffix, -rama, in New York advertising language. The appeal of -rama is evidently due to the great success of the wide-screen motion picture, Cinerama, which had its New York première on September 30, 1952…Cinerama was made up in the mid-194os, when Fred Waller, the inventor of this motion picture technique, offered a case of champagne to a co-worker for the best name for the process. The prize was won by Waldo McLowerie, who came up with Cinerama. It was obviously coined on the analogy of panorama and the less frequent cyclorama, from the root cine-, occurring in a great many words related to motion pictures, and the ending -rama, taken from the final part of panorama and cyclorama, disregarding any analytic-etymological considerations. (Panorama, dating from 1796, goes back ultimately to the Greek pan 'every' and horama 'view,' and thus the -o- is an etymologically given phoneme in the compound…)

The transfer was motivated by the similarity in the arrangement of the Cinerama technique…offering a wide panoramic view which creates the illusion of depth, an illusion which is further augmented by stereophonic sound effects...

Immediately after the enthusiastic reception of Cinerama by critics and public, the liquor store next door to the theater called its window display a 'liquorama'; other names followed: audiorama, a display of acoustic instruments; Autorama, a television show; colorama, a color movie; Dekorama, an oil paint decal set; Figurama, an 'amazing new three-dimensional girdle'; Himberama, 'a 4-D show,' advertised on Times Square; motorama, an auto- mobile exhibit; newsorama, a television news program; Phonorama, a new Philco phonograph; scoutorama, a meeting of New York State Boy Scouts; sinerama, in an advertisement of the jacket of a book called Jest and Sex: 'Sexplosively Sexational Sinerama of life'; skinerama, the headline of a World-Telegram article making fun of baldness concoctions; smellorama, the 'symphony' of a 'smell organ,' in an article on experiments in sensory entertainment during the 1920s; striporama, a burlesque movie; telerama, a television show; vistarama, a new anamorphic type of wide-screen photography and projection; and Wonderama, 'the first musical of the future.'

The word Cinerama was by no means the first coinage with this ending in the twentieth century. Well known is the Futurama of the General Motors exhibit during the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, but this did not seem to create a fashion…

The meaning of this suffix is clear: 'a spectacular show or display' (the thing displayed is sometimes indicated in the stem).

John Lotz, "The suffix -rama", American Speech, Vol. 29, No. 2 (May, 1954)

idle

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sunday, idle

perilous

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the perilous state of mexico
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* night scene in neza by brian l. frank for the wsj

strait?

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is it?

via brandavenue

narcomuseo

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museo del enervante, mexico city
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neverland

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neverland, vacant

via fantastic journal

slums‘r’us

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go read

* m.i.a. portrait by napoleon habeica, from babybabybaby magazine

neodepressed (4)

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global warming (plus the tropicalization of old europe)

neodepressed (3)

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bolivia on its way to world superpowerdom due to lithium reserves (plus electrocumbia andina becoming the next reggaeton)

neodepressed (2)

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toxic mist (plus cheap thirdworld imitation imports)

neodepressed (1)

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urban blight (plus not knowing what the f*ck is going on)

soundtrack

if this turns out to be as bad as they say it can get, i think the official soundtrack for the xxist-century neo great depression should be nico muhly's the only tune.

moderno

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"those of us who are most critical of modern life need modernism most"

marshall berman

maggi sabe mejor

i believe marketeers call this targeting the bottom of the pyramid, or something. maybe it's just an offshoot of slumpsploitation.

muschamp, loos, george michael

"even if architecture cannot reform society, it can clarify our vision of the status quo."
herbert muschamp

fact hunting on the subject of adolf loos's three-year stay in the u.s. of a. i found this charming (i daresay retro) little muschamp piece, called "austro turf." try to pay as little attention as possible to the fact that he quotes george michael.

faraway

how far back do we have to dig to find the roots of exotica? les baxter? the 1931 exposition coloniale? robert stacey-judd? the aztec palace? orientalist painting? mestizaje? marco polo

looming

"fractals with les baxter"

summer looming. first official hot day in barcelona. water shortages and no eggs due to the transportation strike. calls for exotica.

to the fair!

since the eighteen-hundreds, the world had never seemed so nineteenth-century.

mexurb

this is one of the original ca. 1960 promotional tv ads for ciudad satélite, the first american-style planned suburb in mexico (the 1940's-50's el pedregal, with its posh barragán-style modernist caserones scattered over a volcanic rock landscape and tied together by winding one-way circuits doesn't really count as middle-class suburb), the bastard brainchild of mario pani (mexican le corbusier, father of the multi, a developmentalist take on the unité d'habitation). satélite was supposed to be a "green belt" and provide "working class housing" but it was fueled by dirty interests (the land was property of former mexican president, miguel alemán) and turned into an aspiring middleclass nightmare of over 3 million people scarred with water scarcity, crime, congestion, informal subdivisions and a name for being mexican whitetrash heaven.

it takes spanish and at least faint notion of what satélite is these days to fully appreciate this, but here it goes:

lookie lookie lookie!
city ahoy! ahoy!
city ahoy! for you and for everyone to see
with its wondrous realities
don't look anywhere else, ciudad satélite has it all
water! electricity! telephones!
true and existing services
concrete pavement, sidewalks, sewage
everything finished with the best of qualities
public lighting, trash collection
everything working, not only projected
a unique shopping mall, open everyday from 9.30 am to 10 pm
where you'll find, just a few steps from home, everything that you need
schools! sunday mass!
in other words, a complete and finished city
...