Something strange has been happening to my friends, both online and off. It goes something like this:

OK, so that might not seem so strange to you, but I know Justin. Justin is a killer photographer who loves track bikes and drinking Lone Star and going to see shows. Justin isn’t the type of person to be Twittering about the Fiesta Bowl. Justin, I would wager, has never worn burnt orange.

But there it is, clear as day. And you have noticed it too…the indie friends and D&D gamers that you know, the ones who eschewed sports and jockiness as a general defining characteristic, have suddenly started debating Teixiera going to the Yankees and Matt Cassel’s free agency situation. They have become informed, engaged, well…fans.

I can’t claim to be any different. Anyone who knew me in college would be aghast at my fandom these days. I follow the Red Sox like I have money on the games. I got up at 6am last spring to watch the exhibition games in Tokyo. I even follow the Globe Sports section on Twitter so I can be the first to know when Varitek re-signs (please re-sign!).

Why has this happened? I think it has to do with the quest for meaning. The quest, that is, for Authenticity.

My favorite blog in the entire internet, Hipster Runoff, has made it a central mission to define this desire for authenticism, the science of explaining what it means for something to be authentic, and why things that are authentic appeal so strongly to those of us who are constantly searching for what’s next. And it goes something like this:

In an increasingly scripted, focus grouped and branded existence, the true things, the authentic experiences, are becoming harder and harder to find. We feel starved for something familiar and worthwhile. Sports provides this, not only because it’s the only thing left on television that is almost always unpredictable in its outcome, but because it is a classic thing to participate in. It is a pastime.

It’s trite to say we’re all searching for something true, but I’ll say it anyway: We are all searching for something true. We want to be connected participants of things that are genuine, that aren’t trying to trick us. It’s why we constantly hunt for vintage Belstaff Trialmaster jackets on eBay, why we listen to Merle Haggard on vinyl rcords played on vintage turntables and tube amps.

You know this to be true. It’s why we got into Lone Star and track bikes to begin with, isn’t it? Both, in their way, connect us to something that has its roots in our collective culture. Lone Star becomes a vessel for us to connect a simple, more honest (and nostaglic) time, and track bikes allow us to be part of a niche, specialized and purely functional sport. Jack Daniels, despite its being featured at TGI Friday’s, is still the de facto whisky. Polaroid, despite becoming a watered down brand for second tier TVs, is still equated with precious, poorly-exposed topless photos.

These things are all genuine, even if the way we experience them is not.

And it’s not just sports and beer. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of my friends, including fellow Barbarians, are genuinely getting into guns (or, for those of us in NYC, the idea of guns). In fact, I called that as the breakout trend for 2009 on my Twitter. It would seem that as our cultural history gets more and more strip-mined of authentic totems, we have to dig deeper. We have to go to the most honest, the most pure, the most authentic. And in doing so, we have to betray the old definitions on what it meant to be alt.

Mainstream is the new alt.

The Internet may not have begun this race to authenticity, but it certainly sped it up. Suddenly, anyone with a decent internet connection can be as alt as anyone else. Trends used to be born geograhically- cities were the epicenter of cool, and eventually it trickled along the highways to middle America. Now hipness is a science, one that can be learned, studied, and challenged. The Internet allows trends to be born, thoroughly researched, surface, and die at an alarming rate, effectively speeding up the evolution of the culture. Alt culture has up til now been a self-referential snake eating its own tail, and suddenly it finds itself gnawing at the back of its head.

Of course, there is one deeper, more authentic and traditional trend that has yet to be embraced: Religion. If that happens; if you start seeing alt-beards at Sunday Mass…well, you heard it here first.

The girl beside me had her shoes off and feet up, and was flipping through Cosmo while simultaneously checking her text messages. The one behind me could not stop talking about what a weirdo her anthropology-major roommate was. I looked around the room and saw variations of the same scene around me. I checked my ticket again.

Yep, this was the Bon Iver show.

At first, I couldn’t figure it out. Granted, I live a pretty isolated existence from mainstream pop culture, and I can never quite tell if the record I like is being listened to by anyone else. So it always catches me off guard when a band I have admired, like Bon Iver, has a much larger and shall we say broad fanbase than I had anticipated. How did these people catch on, anyhow? Now that radio is dead and Tower Records is a ghost, how did they uncover such a gem? I was naively expecting the Pitchfork set – those music fans who, besides obnoxiously texting between songs and going for beers during the quiet jams, are into their music. But this…this was different.

Three songs into the (sublime) set, when Justin Vernon started to play Wolves, I had my answer. The girl behind me (the one with the weirdo roommate), leaned against her date and loudly whispered: “This is the song from Gray’s Anatomy.

Ah.

Now, historically, I have had no problems with the bands I love selling the rights to their music for things like commercials, tv shows, etc. I tend to agree with Kevin Barnes on the subject; I had seen it as a benign force: It didn’t alter my appreciation of the music to a great degree (Modest Mouse’s American Idol Ford Sing-a-long excepted), and it provided the musicians I admire with extra cash when most of their fans were stealing their albums. Win, win.

I also had no problem with the broadening (or some would say mainstreaming) of their fanbase. I’m not some music snob who feels like a band he likes is somehow corrupted when they’re discovered by the mainstream. It doesn’t affect my personal relationship with the music, you see? When I come home after a long day and I want to listen to Santogold on the hi-fi, the album sounds no different to me just because it’s being played in 80% of the iPods on the F train, or that I heard it the night before during the Sox game in a Bud Light Lime commercial.

But it has started to affect how I experience a band live, and affect it greatly. The Bon Iver show was when the realization crystallized for me, but there have been far more insidious examples, most notably the My Morning Jacket show at Radio City Music Hall. I had arrived late, and saw a bunch of dudes walking into the venue dressed as if they were going to a Pimps and Hoes party. I thought there was some sort of mistake, but no – this is how they felt My Morning Jacket should be seen – in costume. For them, the band was just another accessory for their evening, and that was made clear when they would talk AT FULL VOLUME TO ONE ANOTHER SIX INCHES IN FRONT OF MY FACE during any ballad. I left before the set was over.

And therein lies the problem: When a band sells their song, or gets it on a popular TV show like Gray’s Anatomy, it can fundamentally change how the band is experienced live. It alters one of the most important aspects of a live show – the quality of the audience. It forces less intimate experiences in larger venues. And, in many cases, it introduces an element that is there purely for social credit, and, sadly, it cheapens it for those of us who wanted the music itself.

Nick beat me to it, but I wanted to express my happiness about Mr. Jobs’ health letter, and tell Gizmodo to STFU. Seriously, what are they, shorting the stock or something? Can someone send the SEC over there?

What is the sign that, as an artist, you’ve reached your Warhol moment? That you’ve transcended the incestuous art and hipster scenes and become recognizable as a pop icon? That your particular style defines an era?

Some would argue it is when your art became the symbol of a sea change in America:

Some would say it is when that art becomes canonized in the form of the cover of Time Magazine:

I, however, would contend that it when your style is used in a satirical porno for Hustler:

Kudos, Mr. Fairey, you’ve become legend.

Apple is pulling out of Macworld…. No more Steve Jobs keynotes. No more BOOM. No more One More Thing.

Man, I’m getting old.

All this talk of an Auto Industry bailout and the need for hybrid car has made me realize (again) how few people understand the process by which a product is made. Because, if they did, these arguments that the Big 3 should only be given the money if they “start making fuel efficient cars” would be …

When you go to buy a new car, that car in the showroom began, in a literal sense, 2-3 years earlier, probably longer. The process begins when management sits down and decides on their product line, which cars need replacements, which cars need refreshes, which lines can be merged, streamlined, etc. Business decisions.

From there, the design of the car begins. If it’s a simple refresh; an engine replacement, a new face, well that timeline is shorter, but no one is suggesting the Big 3’s ills would be cured by a cuter grill on an Escalade. For a redesign, a new framework has to be designed, a new drivetrain, new engines, new technologies, new body, new interior, mew manufacturing, et cetera et cetera. It is a deeply complex and time consuming process, and not an easy one to get right. And even all of that isn’t enough to couse correct the Big 3.

What a solution in Detroit requires is a complete rethinking of what products consumers want, both now and a decade from now, because even if Ford or GM decided that they were going to start building Pruis-killers today, they don’t have the technology or the R&D to put into the design process. (It is telling that the hybrid tech that Ford uses is licensed from Toyota – that is because, as Wired put it, it is damn hard to develop an algorithm that manages a hybrid power train)

And this is why I think, ultimately, that Detroit may be doomed (or in for a long long decade). The reason companies like Toyota and Honda are so far ahead of the Americans isn’t because they looked at what consumers wanted and built it; they looked ahead, decades ahead, and decided what they really needed to start spending their R&D dollars on was hybrid technology. The Prius did not just appear – it was a gamble, an educated guess into the future (pretty educated, given the constant decline of oil), and for many years Toyota sold it at a loss just to establish themselves as the technology leader on this new type of car (which they have done, unbelievably so. Pruis has become shorthand for fuel efficient tech). And I guarantee that Toyota and companies like it are already deeply invested in the next technology.

Therein lies the difference: The Big 3 are looking at this problem from a reactionary standpoint (customers aren’t buying our cars because we aren’t building cars customers want) whereas the industry leaders are attacking the market with a proactive plan* (customers will eventually need cars that do X in a decade, so let’s begin to invest in how to make those).

So, does that mean the Big 3 should be let to fail? I don’t know. I’m sure as shit glad it’s not my call. If it were, I’d probably say the U.S. government and its shareholders (that’s you and me, honey) should invest its dollars in the company most likely to succeed (Ford), that company should merge with one that has some interest in hybrid tech (GM) and the third company should succumb to it’s own undoing (Chrysler – hey, they HAD their chance, 2 if you count the Daimler buyout.)

But, like I said, I’m glad it’s not my call. I don’t even own a car.

*There is probably someone who can make a sound argument on how Japanese culture has influenced its industries’ business approach, but it’s not me.

An awesome post today from Ben Hyde from Google on passwords as “the worst usability disaster, ever.”

The owner of the Oakland A’s, Lew Wolff, recently suggested that the first round of playoffs in professional baseball, the League Division Series, should be shortened to a single game. He said it would be, in his words, exciting.

I find this interesting for a few reasons. First, the source of the suggestion: As was noted in the book Moneyball, the problem with the Playoffs is that it undoes the thing that makes a low-budget, strategically winning team such as Oakland successful: it introduces luck. The timeline of the playoffs is excruciatingly short when compared to the marathon regular season, so luck (a random vector that only time can average out) becomes a far more potent influencer. This could be the reason that, despite having winning seasons, the A’s particular management style never finds them in the World Series.

So this makes the suggestion by Wolff to shorten it to one game all the more curious. I could understand the impetus, but this only exacerbates the problem: shortening the gameplay from 5 games to 1 increases the possibility of luck as influencer dramatically (I would say it increases it 5x, but I’ve never been good at percentages). I suppose they hope for the best on the crapshoot: put it all on black.

If Major League Baseball really wanted to shorten the postseason while limiting luck as a deciding factor in the outcome, the structure should be something like this: LDS: 7 games. LCS: 5 games, WS: 3 games. That would ensure that luck as a factor was minimized during the early rounds, when there are a greater number of teams involved, ergo a greater number of games played (the math works out to a possible 28 games in the LDS, 10 games in the LCS, and 3 games in the WS) to spread the luck over. That way, by the time we get to the World Series, luck is only strongly influencing the outcome between 2 teams, so it’s a greater chance that a “deserving” team will be crowned champion.

Now, will Selig agree to a best-of-three WS? Severely doubtful. The World Series has always been a best of 7 situation, and tradition aside, limiting it to at worst 2, at best 3 games wouldn’t exactly make for a windfall in advertising dollars. So I humbly suggest the 3-5-7 game structure. Sure, it still increases the odds of an “undeserving” team making it to the World Series, but each successive round would prove out the stronger team’s particular strengths.

Just a thought.