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2.10.11
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10.6.11
From The Hype Of Music To A Bubble Of Tech

One of my habits in the wee hours of the night (I am a insomne, it is ok) is to check out what has been updated at Hulu. I happen to use the Hulu Desktop app as I can also then use a little Media Center bridge app in the case I want to watch Hulu in the TV fed directly fed from my Laptop. The way you scan for new stuff added in Hulu with the desktop app is to check out slots at the “Recently Added” section of the UI and the guide yourself by the thumbnails, names and little write ups as you pass them around.
I don’t mind doing that every other given day because it reminds me to searching through records (movies, books, etc) at stores. And nowadays this is the closest to get that same feeling you can possible get afterall without that hassle of traveling lots and lots of kilometers in the city. Just that now you can say you are just scavenging a corner of the internet sitting at a datacenter somewhere in the world.
And while I was doing that, I saw that the movie section had just added Hype! (1996) and it was free to watch without any Hulu Plus subscription getting in the way. I remember watching it back in (1998) thanks to having found it in my still favorite local weekly open market. Back then I remember liking it a lot but at the same time it didn’t felt like I was watching the documenting of something old enough for me to really really pay mind to it. Now on the other hand, it has been well over 12 years since I first watched it, 15 years since it was released and what it documents is from 16 to 24 years back in the past. So now I find it not just good, but great given that it strongly projects a sense of nostalgia.
Well, the movie is about the USA northwest rock explosion (a.k.a Seattle Scene or Grunge Scene) that had its biggest heyday from 1988 to 1993. The rise of Sub Pop, the rundown of a war of hundreds of bands that are now mostly forgotten thanks to those 10 big bands that are remembered and became legends of that scene by now. So if you once liked the music from that time and part of the world or you still do. Then Hype! is the documentary you must watch. Right now I would put it as essential as Wild Style. You can even watch it here at the end of this post if you want.
What struck me as so incredibly amusing about the movie now that I am older and living in “the future”, is the part where the Seattle depicted and talked about in the movie now not only no longer exists, but that at the end of the movie (Spoilers ahead) they, the protagonists of that phenomenon are looking at it as “it then just turned in to this modern but not that important city that now will be just like any other city” kind of way which is hilarious.
Because if this was filmed in 1995, the next big thing in Seattle was already happening as Microsoft became Mainstream and Massive thanks to the release of Windows 95 and the Dot Com bubble started growing and with it all kind of companies appeared and started rising from Seattle, with the specific notables of Amazon and Starbucks going on their own world domination plans from there on. And all about the movie and the timeframe in the 90’s it digs in to, truly puts in perspective the then and now where it went from being about the physical experience of things to the digital experience of things and from the individual or grouped and contained thinking to the socially interconnected. It didn’t stroke me as obvious back then because I was already online by late 1993 and i was already doing things the same way as now everyone does them by 1999, while at the same time doing and living the things the way they were done back then. So if you were a kid of the 80’s and a teen of the 90’s, this movie should serve as the perfect vehicle to a memory trip full of nostalgia. And also the realization that most of those in the movie were just whining without any common sense and just angst for angst. Basically your classic Generation X postured 90’s in that old reality called the 20th century that now seems so far away into the past. Good stuff.
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