Some New Years Resolutions for Us All

Help me make these happen. They're not the sort of things that one man can do alone.

First, in fashion. Argyle is the new plaid; houndstooth is the new pinstripe. This is my decision. Everybody go make it happen; now please. While you're at it, no more tucking jeans into boots unless you live in Texas. Even then, it might not be such a great idea.

In application interface design, I want to see woodgrain where I'm starting to get tired of seeing brushed metal. Brushed metal was cool for one season, but it got overused mostly because Apple refused to follow their own Human Interface Guidelines. The madness stops now, people. Woodgrain is the new brushed metal, for when the interface is meant to duplicate the feel of an existing device. I want a stylized look that *isn't* going to become so overused it loses its edge. People are so jaded with window decoration these days and they need to be snapped out of it. Elegant is the new complicated; beautiful is the new functional. Spread the word.

In web design, let's sit back and revolutionize the way people interact with web pages and the Web as a whole. It's time for a transformation in the nature of the medium. I'm not talking Web 2.0 here. I'm saying that Web 1.0 was really Print 2.0. Let's not chain ourselves to words on paper; we don't need that paradigm to constrain us any more. So let's band together and make an experience that is unique and completely separate from looking something up in a book or reading a newspaper, but that is so intuitive that people will feel like it's how they've always been doing it. I have my own ideas but it's too soon for them to come out. Let's race and see who gets there first.

And in my life, I want to get back to the production end of music. I love to listen, but I also love to play, and I haven't been playing at all recently. Getting my decks out of storage was the first big step. Getting my skills out of storage is going to take some doing. I can do this though, and I will do this. My mind constantly swims in music and I love it. I need to bring it back, but this time I'm going to use all of the new music that I have grown to either love or grown to realize has a place in hip hop, and I'm going to bring it back. A lifetime of listening to the widest possible variety of music night and day will definitely teach you that everything is connected and everything is influenced by everything. The best hip hop deejays are the ones that listen to rock (see also: DJ Shadow, but in particular Afrika Bambaataa and Prince Paul).

I know this is a tall order for myself, but within five years I want to be able to do whatever I want. You can take that to mean that I'll have enough money or enough influence or enough power or enough streetcred so that if I say I want to take three months and drive a motorcycle through all of South America, I can. If I want to travel to Siberia to take photographs of old soviet nuclear waste dumps, I want to be able to do that. We're entering decade three here; it's time I showed the world my power move.

That is all. Until later, space cadets.

-- m a x