FX’s Atlanta is a sneaky good show

Atlanta isn’t one of those shows where you can watch the pilot episode and then get on social media and tell all of your internet friends that this show is great, and that you should really watch it.  Like Cobra Kai.  No, Atlanta is the kind of show where you watch it at your own leisure, and you think about every episode for a little bit, and then come to a pretty definitive opinion after pondering about the layers upon layers of each episode.

I just finished season two of Atlanta, and much like finishing up the first season, I had to think about it for a little bit, but my general consensus is that it’s a really good show.  I think the best ways to describe it is that Atlanta is most certainly not the kind of show that’s going to immediately be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those of whom it is, it’s a really good show in that it provokes thought, thinking from alternative perspectives, provides a wealth of situational humor and is pretty well shot from a visual standpoint.  The writing is stellar and gets most of its points across without having to lean on the crutch that most everyone in the show is black and doesn’t really require blacking it up in order to convey the story, except when it’s deliberately trying to so.

I think Atlanta is the kind of show that anyone who liked Netflix’s Master of None would be able to appreciate, except Atlanta is a little more socially acceptable right now since Donald Glover or anyone else in the cast of Atlanta hasn’t yet been accused of sexual harassment.  But both shows come from the modus operandi of having strong, creative writing, serious societal observation and discussion, and plenty of situational humor to keep the mood from getting too preachy.  Both are kind of on a similar level, and in spite of the misconducts of Aziz Ansari, I still really like both shows unapologetically.

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Sound logic

Atlanta rapper encourages people to use paintballs instead of actual bullets, if one must satiate the need to shoot firearms.  The message was seemingly intended to curb violence; except when some dickheads unleashed a torrent of paintballs on a bunch of people at a public gas station, one enraged 15-year old fired back – with a real firearm.  And of course, a toddler was inadvertently struck and killed in the completely unnecessary and preventable fracas, and so now a child is dead and a teenager is in all likelihood going to prison for a long time and the people shooting paintballs who started the whole incident are nowhere to be found.

Hashtag Atlanta not the TV show

It’s a little difficult who really should be responsible for the root of this whole incident.  On one hand, we have some c-list rapper using his social media reach to even put the wise idea into the heads of little impressionable wannabe thugs that shooting guns is okay as long as it’s with paintballs and not actual bullets.  On the other hand, the dumbasses he influences aren’t really his responsibility, and he’s not the one who fired at actual people, since his own genius video documentation of him vandalizing things were usually inanimate objects.

I think the seeds to why I felt like writing about it is simply the fallacy of the intention of suggesting paintballs over bullets; which is basically why shoot anything at all?  In what world outside of the Middle East are people afflicted with the urge to need to shoot shit to where a suggestion of paintballs over bullets would even be made in the first place?  Look, I know coming from America there’s a lot of irony in that statement, but still, there’s something seriously wrong with the idea of if you must shoot guns is even a perceived thing in the first place.

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If this is what constitutes acceptable design, I need to change careers

what the fuck is this shit

Were the exact words that my brain said when I looked at the new Creative Loafing Atlanta website.

I thought maybe the site had been hacked or something, and whatever Russian or Chinese hacking organization was deliberately using a 4-bit retro Oregon Trail looking interface as their ransom page demanding some Bitcoins in exchange for control over their website again, but after a few minutes, not seconds, of figuring out how the new navigation worked, it was pretty much confirmed that this was in fact, the new Creative Loafing Atlanta.

To cut to the chase, this is basically the worst redesign that I’ve ever seen in my entire life.  It’s worse than when Pepsi tried to use the Golden Ratio and the Vitruvian Man to explain their logo, which was pretty bad considering it literally cost Pepsi $1.4 million dollars for a PowerPoint so inflated with bullshit that it could have incinerated Palo Alto if it caught on fire.  But that’s just a logo, on a line of products that lots of people otherwise enjoy to indulge in regardless of what logo was slapped onto the bottles.

Creative Loafing Atlanta was already a publication in more or less rag status, and they’re an entity that can’t really afford to fuck up on design when whether people admit it or not, love to judge books by their covers.  And yet, here we stand, with a website that looks like an unintentional glitch, or your monitor fell face first and when you propped it back up, pixels are dead and busted, resulting in the horrific interface that currently loads.

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When in doubt, change the name, make logos

That’s the Atlanta way.  Or rather, announce news that declares some grand unification of transportation agencies in order to mask that some other umbrella-shell company is being created that will pay off a whole lot of new people for doing jack shit.

Fresh on the heels of my last post where Google put a spotlight on the unintentionally-official meaning of MARTA comes this news that Georgia is going to create a regional transit governing system that will oversee the mass transit authorities across the entire Metro Atlanta area; including MARTA.  The solution?  A new name!

The Atlantaregion Transit Linkauthority, or The ATL!  And they invented new words in the process because they don’t know how acronyms work!

In other words, the goal on paper is that supposedly by 2023, all buses, from Cobb’s CobbLink, Gwinnett’s GRTA, MARTA, and any other regional buses in Clayton or DeKalb will all be re-branded ATL buses.  All MARTA trains will be re-branded ATL trains.  The ATL transportation options will hopefully be consolidated under one brand and identity, with the theory that it will supposedly actually help boost economic viability.

What’s actually going to happen is that by 2019, the teats of all these regional transit authority will be milked by a few people who came up with this brilliant idea, they’ll make a lot of money, by 2021, The ARTLA will be all but forgotten 2022, Cobb and Gwinnett will still be afraid of black people and oppose the rebranding of their buses and in 2023, MARTA will still be MARTA, GRTA will still be GRTA, Cobb will still be vehemently opposed to black people, and Google will still spit out Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta in their queries for the meaning of MARTA.

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I’d vote for that

So it’s been a little bit of time since the rise and fall of Renaissance, Georgia, ironically before it even got to be risen officially.  It’s actually been quiet since then, which means the twisted local government is either plotting their next attempt to deceive the people and roll something out without any of their representation, or perhaps they’re busy watching Netflix instead.  Either way, with the failure that was Renaissance, the name of the area remains the cold and callous sounding “South Fulton.”

And unless you’ve been living under a rock, Black Panther-mania has taken over the world for this hot second, and few people in the world can actually say anything bad about the ground and record-breaking film.  Needless to say, all things Black Panther has been on the tips of everyone’s tongues this week, as just about everyone in the world is still seeking out tickets and trying to go see the film for the first, or third times.

I saw this “joke” pop up on my old neighborhood’s Nextdoor account, and my first thought was “too easy.”  A city in the Metro area that’s like ~80% black wanting to call themselves “Wakanda?”  You don’t say!

But then I thought about how alternatives would have been shit like “Renaissance” or “Atlanta Heights” or something else shitty, and suddenly Wakanda doesn’t seem like such a bad option.  Not only is it ironically funny if it were officially in place, I have to imagine that just about every person who’s seen Black Panther at this point would be completely on board with it, thus eliminating the whole “you can’t change shit without us the people” conflict would be out of the equation.

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As necessary as an asshole on an elbow

Despite the efforts of a noble citizen, as predicted, corrupt progress can seldom be stopped when there’s investor profit to be had, and taxpayers to screw.  College Park for better or worse but most likely worse, will be saddled by the future home of The Gateway Center at College Park, the soon-to-be barely used 100,000 square foot venue that will primarily be known for the home of the developmental G-league Atlanta Hawks.

An asshole.  On your elbow.  That’s about how much anyone needs this.

Seriously, in College Park no less.  One of the most impoverished and crime-ridden regions in the entire state, and plopped right near the busiest airport in the country.  Everything about this is completely idiotic, and shocking nobody, this too will have absolutely no easy MARTA rail access or any other transit options, other than buses.  Meaning It will look like one of the fifty long-term parking car lots surrounding it, and probably be victimized just as badly as all of them, by the legions of car break-ins that have plagued this exact area for literal years now.

Literally right down the street is a shopping center that’s plagued with criminal activity that is getting worse, and a bunch of rich idiots think it’s a great idea to waste money and build a giant venue right near it?  Is this what they think gentrification is?  Building nice things in ghetto areas and hoping that things will just magically turn around?  I mean Atlanta’s trying to do that shit on the west end of the city, and plopping Publixes and Chick Fil-As in the ghetto doesn’t seem to be working.  I’d wager money that a brand new convention center/venue is going to drive crime away as much as waving a flashlight will spook some mosquitoes.

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A glimmer of hope

I read this story* about a local man in-College Park, Georgia-who heroically cockblocked the issuance of bonds on a technicality and successfully stalled the procedures that would have begun the motion of a sporting arena being built, so that the Atlanta Hawks could have a local developmental team. 

In College Park, Georgia.  One of the most dangerous cities in the entire state.

*This is unfortunately behind the AJC’s pitiful paywall, but frankly you can just hit the stop button as soon as the page opens to dead stop the script that tries to tell you that it’s paid content, and usually the essential text has already loaded by then

As much as I admire the moxie of this individual, he’s unfortunately simply prolonging the inevitable, and delaying yet another sporting venue that the city doesn’t need, because Atlanta is obsessed with sporting facilities and will stop at nothing to have arenas soon for cricket, eSports, and another popular local activity, urban ATV riders running from the police.

But he did buy some time in which even the dimwits at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution could even think that maybe, just maybe, building an arena in College Park, for the Atlanta Hawks, just might not be the best idea in the world.  Or at least putting into words the very obvious revelation that stadiums and monstrous convention centers are not at all profitable and ultimately end up hurting the people they’re built near, but obviously not the investors and corporations who came up with the ideas to build them in the first place.

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